Richard Jenkins and Haaz Sleiman in The Visitor Courtesy of Overture Films

What sort of immigration research did you do? The holding prison in Queens, for example, does that building exist?
That building is just a good find by my scouts and my production designer to make it work. But there was a building just like that in another section of Queens that you could walk by hundred times. They look like factories; they don't look like prisons. It's startling. And then you go in and there is a stark contrast to the exterior. They are purposely kept low profile. That was something I was anxious to put into the movie.

Did you manage to get inside any of those prisons?
Yeah. Part of my research was I started working with this organization out of New York, called The Sojourners, out of Riverside Church, a non-denominational outreach program. But because of the affiliation with the church we could go and visit with detainees. I did that for almost a year to get a sense of the place. That really informed a lot. In fact, right before we went to shoot, I started bringing people with me: my production designer, my cinematographer and then ultimately the cast to give them a sense of just how lifeless and clinical and creepy these places are.

What really struck me was some of the paraphernalia that you see in these prisons: the portraits of George Bush, 9/11 murals, patriotic slogans, flags, etcetera.
Yeah. If you notice there is a moment where he is leaving the detention center for the first time where we linger on a mural [of the Twin Towers] in the background. My production designer sketched that from an actual mural which detainees had painted. The connection with the World Trade Center I find really creepy because it is a not-so-implicit sort of connection [with] those events and it makes you wonder what picture they are painting. The other creepy thing that I couldn't get in the movie was they also have these totally random posters like two kittens playing and a dog pulling down the pants of a little girl, and weird things like that. Who chose the art here?

I want to talk about the casting of the lead. Richard Jenkins plays an emotionally shuttered kind of guy. What made you choose him for the role?
I am attracted to really good actors. And I think being an actor, [casting] is a strength of mine. Actors talk and we know who actors favor. And Richard is an actor's actor. Everyone knows this guy. He is the consummate character actor, and he has probably done sixty movies. There is a reason why the Coen brothers use him again and again and again. It is because he is a guy who doesn't miss. He is honest. He's unpredictable and he disappears into his role and I felt that knowing I was going to have a non-American cast, it was important for me to have a guy who could be an Everyman who could disappear into the role and not take the movie over with his persona.

Drumming as catharsis...