Filmmaker Aarushi Chowdhury follows up her recent short film Clown with a new, darkly funny and sharply observed short, Phorid, a story that explores self-help culture, masculinity, and the desperate search for validation.

Set within the world of motivational books, social media influence, and personal growth gurus, Phorid follows Blair (Jesse Vogelaar), a struggling self-help author whose obsession with success and recognition begins to unravel both his marriage and his sense of self. What starts as a quest for influence quickly spirals into something far more uncomfortable, exposing the dangers of performance, insecurity, and the need to be chosen.

In our interview, Chowdhury reflects on the film’s origins, her fascination with self-help culture, and the growing influence of online spaces that encourage endless self-improvement while rarely addressing genuine self-worth. She also discusses collaborating with co-writer Riley Longworth, directing while acting in the film, and her desire to create more complex and flawed roles for Indian women on screen.

Read on as Aarushi takes Cinema Australia behind the scenes of one of the most intriguing Australian short films in recent years.

Phorid is set to hit the festival circuit soon.

Interview by Matthew Eeles

Louis Theroux’s Inside the Manosphere has recently brought the manosphere into the spotlight for those who weren’t familiar with the term or the lifestyle it promotes. Phorid looks at men from the opposite angle, in that the lead character, Blair, lacks that level of confidence. How did this narrative come about for you, and why did you want to explore self-help themes here?

Louis Theroux’s documentary was so uncomfortable and that’s what made it so relevant! We’d actually finished shooting Phorid the year before that documentary came out. Louis is always so good at spotting things that sit under the surface and I recognised a lot of the themes we were trying to explore. Phorid is really interested in the perspective of the followers of the manosphere. The people consuming the advice. People like Blair, who aren’t fully conscious of what they are absorbing. While he isn’t leading the initiative, Blair sits closer to something that’s just as unsettling – the “nice guy” archetype. There’s something disturbing about covert toxicity; someone who looks gentle, even harmless, but is operating from the same hunger for control and validation. And that’s why I find stories like Curry Barker’s Obsession so nerve wracking. It’s this idea of wanting validation under the guise of care, while slowly consuming the other person in the process. 

I wanted to explore self-help because I spend a ridiculous amount of time thinking about why myself and other people behave the way we do. Self-help is a very useful tool, I love it! But it can quickly become a trap if misapplied or fallen in the hands of the wrong teacher.

A lot of self-help relies on consistent growth. Which isn’t inherently bad, but certain corners of the manosphere culture rely on keeping young men in a never-ending loop of self-improvement rather than self-acceptance. The extremist gurus seldom teach men about building internal self-worth, instead, they encourage chasing external KPIs – fitness for aesthetic, wealth for spectacle and status over character. Phorid explores the nuance of how difficult it is to outrun a flawed system that promises security, yet thrives on keeping its audience insecure. 

Traditionally, men are taught to measure their worth through what they can provide materially rather than how they connect with other people. Relational coherence isn’t often a priority in extremist self-help when ironically, most of these men are driven by a need for human connection. Certain self-help preys on these fears by placing the focus on material gain with the promise of subjective reward.

This output-based validation system affects women too, which is why Adi is also trapped in a similar silver cage of chasing external validation. We’ve all been there. And I hope we can empathise with these characters without excusing their questionable choices.

The film is funny though.

You co-wrote this film with Riley Longworth. How important was it to have a male co-writer to bounce ideas off, bringing his own perspective to these characters?

Riley was a wonderful writing partner. We wrote this over a few months in weekly writer’s rooms, and it started from this idea of “mirroring”. I was watching a YouTube video of this CIA-operative explaining social tactics to secure trust, power and influence with sociopaths. These tactics are useful in an interrogation room, but slightly alarming when you start seeing the same strategies show up in everyday conversations. 

I started to notice some self-help gurus encouraging bizarre social tactics to gain affection while keeping its followers in the loop of never actually obtaining the thing they always wanted – meaningful connection. That requires vulnerability, but that’s sold as weak in the power-maxxing media targeted toward young men. When, in fact, the most courageous thing one can do is be authentically vulnerable in their connections. Alas, if vulnerability was easy and without risk – everyone would do it and it also wouldn’t make for a compelling piece of conflict.

I shared these thoughts with Riley and he began sharing his experiences in dissecting masculinity – the fads, the posturing and the pressure to perform. He’d already done a lot of work on his own assumptions, which meant he could bring real nuance to Blair and Aman without softening them into caricatures. And he’s also just very funny, which helps when you’re making a dark comedy. We laughed, a lot.

I really appreciated Riley because we balanced each other out. We wanted to explore toxic masculinity with both empathy and accountability. These men are not just “bad guys”, they’re often people trying, horribly, to secure safety. That doesn’t excuse what they do. Blair’s choices are still excruciating. But having Riley in the room helped us hold both things at once: the damage, and the systems that helped create it.

Jesse Vogelaar is so great in this role. He embodies the character of Blair incredibly well, both in his performance and aesthetically. Tell us about working with Jesse, and what he brought to the role that may not have been exactly as it was on the page.

Jesse has this naturally endearing awkwardness about him (he told me I can say that) which just completely brought Blair to life. I wanted to cast as close to Blair’s temperament as possible, and while Jesse would never be as rogue, his introversion was incredibly useful in shaping the character.  In rehearsals, we ended up borrowing a lot from the way Jesse moves, pauses, and responds, and then heightening those qualities for Blair. A lot of Blair’s discomfort, especially when he is getting attention, came from Jesse’s own natural response to that kind of energy.

Jesse is a director himself, so he really understood the tone we were trying to capture. The challenge was finding someone who could play the absurdity completely straight. The world of the film is heightened, but the humour comes from grounded behaviour and Jesse instinctively understood that balance. That made rehearsals really valuable because we were able to create a shared language around pacing, rhythm, and where a moment needed to breathe or land differently.

This was one of Jesse’s first acting roles so I was grateful for the trust he placed in me. We got to play a lot and really enjoyed the improvisation which is handy when you’re shooting largely nights across four days. Jesse’s also just genuinely very fun to watch, which is half the battle with a character like Blair who needs to hold your attention. He brought a warmth and vulnerability to Blair that made him feel real, even at his most frustrating – the best pretend husband I could ask for!

Speaking of casting, you also give a great performance in Phorid. How much of a challenge was it for you to direct and act at the same time, and what steps did you take to ease the pressure of balancing those two responsibilities?

Thank you! I didn’t realise how exhausted I was until I got home and slept for three days. The real stress actually started once the shoot was over and I was suddenly meant to just… relax (yikes!) Rest, annoyingly, turned out to be far more uncomfortable than being in the chaos. I realised I much prefer having too much to think about than too little. Unhealthy, I know.

Surprisingly, though, the shoot wasn’t as challenging as we’d imagined, and that is entirely because of Phorid’s cast and crew. I’m a major planner, so I actually feel safest when I’ve over-prepped and then have room to play on the day. Luckily, I surrounded myself with people who work the same way. The prep was thorough, which meant that once we got on set, my mental load was much lower and I could focus on performance and the immediate decisions that needed my attention.

I had a really strong team around me: Paige Gibson, our primary script supervisor had a real sense not just of continuity but of edit and tone, so when I wasn’t physically there, she had a bit of my brain on. And creatively, I was very spoiled. Bonita Carzino on camera, Irany Turral on production design, and Petria Hogarth on costume – a top-notch team. And because we had such rigorous planning conversations beforehand, we were aligned on tone, characters, and what we were trying to achieve from the start. I felt like I had very little stress going in because everyone knew the story inside out. 

The cast were incredible and gave me so much energy – Jesse, Patrick Durnan Silva, and Sahil Saluja were consistently so generous with their performances. There’s something really helpful about playing one of the characters as well, because it gives you a bit more control over one part of the shoot, even if it does mean taking on extra work that nobody can delegate. Worth it!

It was a very ambitious film made possible by an even more ambitious cast and crew. I am so grateful.

If I were to do anything differently next time, I’d have an established split to watch playback and proper sound, I watched playback out of the camera monitor on this one so it was a little more time-consuming. I’d also probably do my coverage first rather than last, just so I can save more energy for performance and then move into directing. But honestly, despite the challenges, I’d do it again in a heartbeat.

Why did you decide to star in the film yourself rather than casting someone else?

We had a really rigorous casting process for Adi, probably the longest one in the film. We saw exceptional tapes, and there is genuinely so much brilliant Indian female talent in Melbourne, which is exciting.

Through watching those fantastic performances, I realised Adi needs to be developed a little further. I found that the best way to crack her open was to spend more time with her myself. I read lines with my sister, kept shaping her, and eventually it felt very natural to play her. It helped that I had a very fun time doing so. 

In the end, the more time I spent with Adi, the more I couldn’t let her go. 

You’ve said that your character, Adi, is “sharp, ambitious, and self-serving – a level of flawed complexity rarely afforded to Indian female characters on screen.” Can you elaborate on that, and what impact has this lack of representation had on you personally?

Indian women on Western screens are so often depicted as moral compasses. They are rarely allowed to be flawed, boisterous, selfish, ambitious, messy – all the things that humans are. In reality, ethnic women are deeply nuanced and not easy to categorise but when we strip away their humanity we also strip away what makes them so interesting to watch. When we write them as neat or morally tidy, it just doesn’t feel honest. Ethnic women can never embark on the hero’s journey if they’re never allowed to be flawed.

So naturally, it was important for me that Adi is sharp and ambitious but also at times, self-serving and controlling. She isn’t an innocent bystander, she is stuck in the same performance trap as Blair, driven by the same need to be validated through material success but employing very different tactics to achieve it.

The cultural impact of one-dimensional representation of ethnic women is frustrating. I strongly believe that the media we consume shapes our unconscious beliefs, more than we realise. When ethnic women are not reflected accurately on screen, they are not given the same patience or room to redeem themselves that men are so often afforded. As a result, we become a society with far less tolerance for women making mistakes, in real life. When women are only shown as virtuous or likeable or endlessly accommodating, it creates a very damaging social expectation where we are held to a much higher standard and expected to keep meeting it over and over again.

That’s why I think it matters how we write ethnic women on screen. Part of that change comes from having more women of colour in writer’s rooms.

For a short film, Phorid moves between quite a few different locations, which really opens up and expands the world rather than making it feel contained to a single setting, as many short films do. What was the biggest challenge in shooting across multiple locations?

It was all very logistically challenging, as you can imagine. We didn’t have the resources for a location manager, so I was running around to markets, striking deals, and sending contacts through to Ash, our producer, who would then formalise everything. It was very much a team effort, but also a very hands-on and chaotic one.

The number of locations largely came from the writing process. I come from a shorts background and Riley comes from features, so three locations was our happy compromise. Despite the challenges in securing locations, it felt like the right choice because we got to live and breathe in Blair and Adi’s world rather than restrict the characters in one space.

The actual day-to-day logistics were definitely the hardest part. I know firsthand how annoying all of that can be, which is why I really appreciate the production team for keeping the schedule so efficient and not letting the location moves derail the day.

One of the hardest nights was at a butcher shop that was generously letting us shoot there at a discounted rate. It was 3AM, Ash and I were the last ones there, we were completely cooked, and we still had to lock everything up properly because we had another shoot day there. Of course, the alarm system wasn’t working, the lights wouldn’t switch off, and then we realised the prop car was blocking the gate that we needed to close to go home. Our designer had already left with the key, so in our sleep-deprived brilliance we briefly considered pushing an 1,800kg Subaru away. Naturally, that was not going to happen. We finally got the key ubered over and all we had to do was reverse this car and we could finally go home. We opened the car door and our souls left our bodies – the car was manual. I didn’t know how to drive stick and Ash hadn’t driven in about ten years. So it was 4AM, Ash and I in the car, learning how to drive manual from ChatGPT. The delirium was growing and eventually, we got the car in reverse and started inching it backwards. We finally made it out, got the gate closed, and then looked down and realised I had driven straight over the catering we had forgotten was sitting on the ground. Chicken biryani everywhere. You never quite forget the image of your producer laughing hysterically while picking chilli chicken off the gravel at 5am. I wouldn’t have wanted to be stuck outside Shady’s Meats with anyone but Ash – one of the most patient, caring and intelligent people I know.

For the next film, I’m shooting on one location and learning how to drive stick.

Your executive producer, Iain B. MacDonald, is an extremely accomplished talent, having worked on television series such as Shameless, The Punisher, and Poker Face. How did this collaboration come about, and what did you take away from your time working with Iain?

I first met Iain while I was working as his assistant on Shantaram. He was incredible to learn from, so I made sure to stay in touch. What I admire most about him is that he genuinely makes time for emerging filmmakers. He was also one of the founders of the Essex International Film Festival, so seeing how committed he was to shorts and new voices made me feel a little less nervous to reach out with a project.

When I reached out to see if he’d be interested in coming on board Phorid, he looked through the materials, we had a Zoom, and I was really grateful when he said yes. I think part of what drives him is a real love of filmmaking itself, he consistently recommends films to watch and hearing him discuss what he has seen is monumental in informing my own understanding of filmmaking.

Iain has been instrumental in shaping my practice, both practically and theoretically. He has given me really valuable guidance on how to make work that feels exciting to me, while still staying true to my own experience as well as handling the business side of things.

What animal are you?

Hahaha!! You always have the best questions. According to Buzzfeed, I’m a sea turtle. I didn’t like the answer so I did it again and got a butterfly. Mixed feelings.