In Inheritance, when Maya (Phoebe Dynevor) learns that her father (Rhys Ifans) was once a spy, she suddenly finds herself at the center of an international conspiracy. In her quest for answers, Maya becomes a target and must travel the globe, mastering her father’s skills and unraveling the mysteries of his past in this gripping espionage thriller.
What makes this movie - helmed by Limitless director Neil Burger - particularly unique is the fact it was essentially produced undercover. Filmed using an iPhone, Inheritance was shot without the people surrounding Dynevor and Ifans knowing what was happening...or that they were extras!
As you can probably imagine, that presented Burger with a lot of very unique challenges as a filmmaker. Earlier this month, we sat down with him to learn more about how he approached shooting this edge-of-your-seat thriller.
"It was a fantastic experience actually. As you said, I’ve done big movies but the idea for this movie was really to go around the world and see it as it is," he tells us in the video below. "The problem with when you go on a film, is films are very disruptive and they draw attention to themselves. I didn’t want people looking at us, I wanted to be looking at people."
"The idea was to shoot it on an iPhone, no boom mics, no lighting, so we could see the world flowing by us. It wasn’t a gimmick or merely a substitution for a motion picture camera. It was to give us access. We could go anywhere. We shot in airplanes in flight, full dialogue scenes, stolen shots."
"We did a lot of that. We shot in crowded Cairo markets and nobody looked at us because it looked like just some guy. Everybody’s got an iPhone," Burger continued. "We made this international thriller and other films have been shot on the iPhone, but this is the first one that is an international thriller that goes around the world."
You can watch the full interview on Inheritance below, including a fantastic anecdote from the director about Dynevor stealing a pair of sunglasses - for real - in an airport.
0:00 - Shooting this movie under the radar and the unique circumstances that led to
1:52 - What made Rhys and Phoebe the right leads to carry this movie
3:48 - Whether there was any one location that presented any specific challenges
5:16 - Shooting the movie’s standout motorbike chase sequence
7:09 - Phoebe’s character being a kleptomaniac and her stealing things for real while shooting
Inheritance arrives in theaters on January 24, 2025