The Exiles: Film Restoration News

Sam Worthington, David Duchovny and Ke-Xi Wu’s ‘The Exiles’ Draws on Joseph Conrad’s ‘Heart of Darkness,’ Director Midi Z Reveals (EXCLUSIVE)

In a career-spanning conversation with USA Film News, director Midi Z disclosed for the first time that his upcoming psychological drama The Exiles takes direct inspiration from Joseph Conrad’s seminal 1899 novella Heart of Darkness. The film, which stars Sam Worthington, David Duchovny and rising talent Ke-Xi Wu, is currently in post-production and marks a stark departure from the Myanmar-born filmmaker’s previous work in intimate, semi-autobiographical cinema.

Speaking exclusively from Taipei, Midi Z explained that the Conrad connection is at once structural and spiritual. “What Conrad did with Marlow’s journey up the Congo was to map the interior collapse of a man who believed he was bringing civilization to the wilderness,” the director said. “The Exiles uses a similar riverine framework, but our river is digital, and our heart of darkness is a virtual realm where memory and identity have become commodities.”

A Modern Take on a Classic Tale

The Exiles centers on a disgraced journalist, played by Worthington, who travels to a clandestine data haven in Southeast Asia to find a missing activist (Wu). Duchovny portrays a reclusive tech mogul whose encrypted platform has enabled everything from financial fraud to political assassination - a figure that Midi Z describes as a 21st-century Kurtz. “Kurtz was a colonial administrator who wrote ‘Exterminate all the brutes.’ Our Kurtz runs a server farm and believes he can rewrite history by erasing inconvenient truths,” the director added.

The film’s script, co-written by Midi Z and screenwriter Patrick Wang, spent four years in development. The director noted that the thematic through line between Conrad’s work and our present moment became unavoidable during the pandemic. “We were all staring at screens, trying to distinguish truth from propaganda. Conrad understood that the line between civilized and savage is frightfully thin. It turns out the same is true of online and offline, or fact and fiction.”

Director Midi Z’s Vision

For Midi Z, who gained international recognition with Ice Poison (2014) and The Road to Mandalay (2016), The Exiles represents his first English-language feature and his most ambitious production to date. The film was shot on location in Taiwan, Thailand and Malaysia, with a small crew that the director has worked with for over a decade. He emphasized that despite the larger budget and Hollywood cast, his approach remains grounded in the observational style he honed making documentaries about migrant workers and drug runners.

“I didn’t want to make a thriller in the conventional sense,” Midi Z said. “Conrad’s power is in the slow, almost unbearable accumulation of dread. I wanted the audience to feel as though they are sinking into the mire alongside Worthington’s character - not simply watching him from a safe distance.”

Ke-Xi Wu, who plays the activist Lin, is best known for her work in Chinese independent cinema. The director praised her ability to convey resilience without sentimentality. “Lin is the moral center of the film, but she is also deeply compromised. She has to make deals with Duchovny’s character to survive, and Ke-Xi plays that moral calculus without ever asking for pity.”

Cast and Characters

Worthington, best known for Avatar and Hacksaw Ridge, described the role as one of the most demanding of his career. In a statement provided to USA Film News, the actor said, “Midi doesn’t let you hide behind action set pieces. You have to sit in silence and let the camera watch you think. It’s terrifying and exhilarating.”

Duchovny, meanwhile, brings his signature blend of intellectual menace to the role of Evan Hawke, the mogul who sees human beings as data points. “He’s not a monster in the usual sense,” Duchovny said in a separate interview. “He genuinely believes he is doing good - and that is infinitely more disturbing than a villain who twirls his mustache.”

The film also features a supporting turn from Malaysian actress June Lojong as a cybersecurity analyst who helps Worthington’s character navigate Hawke’s digital labyrinth.

Release and Festival Prospects

While no official release date has been announced, sources close to the production indicate that The Exiles is being readied for a potential premiere at the Venice Film Festival later this year, with a wider theatrical rollout planned for early 2027. Midi Z remained coy about the timeline but confirmed that the final cut is nearly complete.

“Conrad said that the artist ‘appeals to that part of our being which is not dependent on wisdom’,” the director said, smiling. “I hope The Exiles does the same - that it reaches the part of us that still wants to believe in the truth, even when the darkness closes in.”

The exclusive revelation of Conrad’s influence adds a new layer of literary gravity to what is already shaping up to be one of the most anticipated independent films of the year. For Midi Z, it is also a return to first principles. “I read Heart of Darkness as a teenager in Yangon, under a dictatorship. It taught me that the most terrifying journeys are the ones we take inside ourselves. That has never been more true than today.”

Source: Variety