Duncan Jones was nervous filming his latest movie ‘Mute’.
The 46-year-old filmmaker – who has helmed the Netflix sci-fi drama starring Alexander Skarsgard, Sam Rockwell and Paul Rudd – admits he’s made a film that is "darker" than what people might be expecting, but also that it took inspiration from his late father David Bowie.
Jones said: "There was another thing that dad said about putting yourself a little bit deeper in the water than where you can reach [the bottom with] your toes.
"That’s what I did with ‘Mute’. I made a film which was a little bit uncomfortable and unexpected, and darker than people might be expecting.
"I was nervous making it. But nervous in a good way."
Jones’ new film – which is set in Berlin, Germany – follows mute bartender Leo Beiler (Skarsgard), who searches for his missing lady-love and his efforts takes him deeper and deeper into the city’s criminal underbelly.
Jones has been working on the project for a long time and he knew he needed to set it in a city where "cultures collide".
He told The Times newspaper: "I’ve been working on this project for a very long time.
"One of the things that became clear over that long time is that the setting needed to be a city that was a melting pot, or a place where cultures collide.
"And Berlin has always been like that. I’ve had a chance to experience that in a fairly unique way, having been here in the 1970s and a couple of other times over the decades.
"And there have been a lot of things that have come to a head this year, which mirror a lot of the subject matter that ‘Mute’ is essentially about.
"That is, immigrant cultures in a foreign city, either wanting to stay or come into the city, or wanting to leave. And Berlin is the perfect metaphor for a lot of that."
Duncan Jones was nervous filming Mute
