‘Preparation For The Next Life’ Spotlights America’s Dark Open Secrets

(Left to right) Fred Hechinger as Skinner and Sebiye Behtiyar as Aishe in ‘Preparation for the Next Life.’

Jaclyn Martinez/Amazon MGM Studios

Undocumented immigrants and society’s reliance on their labor, and the failures of how we treat young veterans, are two highly contentious issues in modern-day America. Preparation for the Next Life sheds light on the uncomfortable yet vitally important realities.

The drama, based on the novel by Atticus Lish, stars newcomer Sebiye Behtiyar as Aishe, an Uyghur migrant, trying to make a life for herself in New York. She lives a meagre existence working in Chinatown’s underground kitchens, but her future suddenly becomes hopeful when she falls in love with an American soldier, Skinner, played by Fred Hechinger. Preparation for the Next Life lands in theaters on Friday, September 5, 2025.

“This is recognizing that the history of this country’s policy decisions around immigration is really complex, complicated, and ebbs and flows,” explains director Bing Liu. “We’ve also seen a lot of representations of veterans and the veteran experience in the US over the decades. It made it really challenging to try to figure out, like, ‘What am I saying here? What is this film going to add to the pantheon of those other films that have done so much in creating conversations?”

Liu adds, “With casting Fred, there’s a there’s a part of him that he’s just a kid and so many of the movies that I’ve seen about the veteran experience is that they’re older and rougher around the edges, but in doing my research, the people that are sent to go fight these battles, and especially in the forever wars that just happened, a lot of them are 17 or 18 years old. A lot of them didn’t really get to have that part of their childhood developed and experienced before they came back, messed up. I was really hoping to explore that part of the veteran experience, such as ‘What if you tried to enter a romantic relationship, but you don’t know how?’ At the same time, it’s joyous because you get to be a kid in the relationship.”

“At the end of the day, it’s about what happens when two people who have never really had a chance to see what a healthy relationship looks like try to fall in love and perform love, in a way. What happens when you know like their realities are getting in the way?”

‘Preparation for the Next Life’ Relied On Harsh Real World Research

To prepare for the role, Hechinger spoke to multiple veterans, and many of them shared the same core experiences. It brought home a stark reality for him that all too often isn’t talked about.

“A lot of people enlist in high school and grow up fighting,” the actor says. “One of the main things that seemed understandably frustrating about lots of popular narratives was the one-dimensionality of a veteran’s story. That was something that felt like it kept coming up. The novel is so complex, and these are just two utterly convincing, full, individual people. There’s a lot of amazing fiction writing by veterans now. Phil Klay wrote Redeployment, which is an incredible collection of short stories. That was helpful and inspiring. There’s also a book called Daybreak, written by Matt Gallagher. There’s a lot of writing that breaks the mold of a veteran being one thing instead of every single person being their own full person.”

“I was fortunate to have in-depth conversations with younger people about the multifaceted and complicated relationships, what they had seen and been a part of. People need support and care after, and it doesn’t seem like there’s a lot of care in the aftermath.”

Something Behtiyar, making her professional debut with a stellar performance, and Liu, nominated for an Oscar for his documentary Minding the Gap, were able to do was share their personal insights into the immigrant experience.

“I’ve seen a lot of immigration journeys that get at the material, socio-economic climbing, whether that works out or not,” he says. “The thing that I really thought was illuminating about the book was that there’s a spiritual, emotional cost to you trying to make that journey, whether or not it works out or not. My mom moved here. She worked in several Chinese restaurants, eventually bought a house and a car, but she was also very lonely. She didn’t have any family here, and there was a cost to that. I saw that wear on her over the years.”

The actress continues, “Something I share with Aishe is that we’re both from a different culture. People say that when you speak a different language, you develop a different personality, and that’s something you feel as an immigrant all the time. Everything was new. I had to learn, and I have to fit in, and something will feel restricted in a way, but you have to break it. It’s more like a process, to see a different version of yourself in a different reality, be that environment or cultural.”

“There are lots of similarities between Aishe and Skinner because there is so much loss in their heart, but also a little bit of hope. They are in a state of life where they feel abandoned and not seen, but they choose different ways to think of the things that happen in their lives.”

Liu adds, “That’s part of where my documentary interrogation process came in. Because my lead actress had lived a lot of similar experiences to the character she was playing, a lot of the work that we did was asking questions about her personal experiences and how we could use that to be able to help her embody the truth of this character, what choices she would make, and why.”

Preparation for the Next Life was filmed in Flushing, a neighborhood in the borough of Queens, New York. Nothing stopped for that to happen, and that works in the film’s favor.

“We had a lot of fun filming in Flushing, because it was a vivacious community,” Behtiyar, who auditioned for the role after seeing an ad on Facebook. “Everything moved fast. Not many people were paying attention to what we’re doing on the street. You did feel the passion and the life of the community, though, and that gave me so much inspiration for my character.”

“It was so energizing,” Hechinger interjects. “Filming in New York is the best, but a lot of New York movies have a very limited view of what the city is. It’s the same few blocks over and over again. I felt really happy that we were able to show and film some of the greatest parts of the city that you don’t frequently see on film. Every day was really special. People who live in New York don’t really care; they’re there and they have got things to do. Maybe they would notice the camera, but they would keep walking. Sometimes, we were filming scenes, and people would interact with us as if they knew what we were doing was part of life. The great joy is when life and art explode into one another. I remember days when we started improvising with people who were around. We also had the greatest meals and some long, crazy nights because we were often filming in the middle of the night in New York, and you see and hear things that are truly one of a kind.”

However, Liu admits that he had to pull a few strings to keep things as real as possible.

“Let’s just say we had a well-known locations woman who is of Chinese descent and had been working for decades to be able to get access to these spaces, and she carried a lot of cash on her,” the director reveals.

A lot of Preparation for the Next Life takes place in public or small spaces. While that posed challenges for Liu, he was able to roll with it because of his background.

“The way that I like to make documentaries like Minding the Gap is in the verite style in which I’m running around, getting coverage to play out like a scene,” he muses. “I also feel like my background in skateboarding videos really helps me, because I just love experiencing spaces. When you’re riding a skateboard, you feel like water, and you’re experiencing the perception of a three-dimensional space in this fluid way that feels both human and inhuman. That was a big influence. I was showing part of the process of working to my cinematographer, showing him certain videos that made use of camera movement to capture the way skateboarders move in a very intuitive way.”

‘Preparation for the Next Life’ Took The Lead Cast To Uncomfortable Places

Already confident in the casting choices, it was when Liu did a chemistry test that he knew he had stumbled onto something.

“We got us this loft in Soho, and we brought Sebiye and Fred in, and not only could they have chemistry on the page, but when we pushed it further and let them rip, it felt like they were making such surprising choices,” he recalls. “They were responding to each other. It was like, ‘Okay, there’s something really special here. I don’t know if some of the other darker parts of their relationship are going to work, but I feel confident that we have a good baseline here to build off of, because they can really connect.'”

The director was also impressed by mild-mannered Hechinger’s ability to play against type so convincingly.

“It was less about, ‘How do we get there?’ and more about what Fred’s instincts are, where he is not willing to go, and why,” he says. “One of the first things we did in the first day of rehearsal was I sat the two of them down in chairs, and I was like, ‘I know we’ve just met each other, we’ve just started talking, and you don’t know each other really well, but I just want you to try to make each other feel bad about themselves.’ I discovered a lot of things, and I didn’t push it too far, but I feel like those are the sort of moments that I found useful to be able to reevaluate and be like, ‘Okay, let’s figure out how to get past that so that you can safely feel like you can hurt the other person.'”

Aside from the topics of how we, as a society, treat immigrants and veterans, Hechinger believes there are some key lessons to be learned that transcend any politics.

“Even though these characters’ histories and circumstances are so different, they’re both united in what they haven’t been given and this lack of childhood. There are qualities in relationships that they’ve experienced before,” he explains. “I felt like they shared a dream, but they have these different realities. The novel examines it in a wonderful way, but the script kept going deeper into that. It’s very easy to separate people, and it takes enormous amounts of courage, strength, listening, and perseverance to understand and connect. We’re at our best when we connect, not when those strands and stories are most separated.”

The Preparation for the Next Life actor concludes, “They’re both outcasts and essentially ignored in this city. Something that stuck with me a lot when we were working was how much can be felt between them, but still unsaid. With Skinner, there’s such an immense discrepancy between what he was promised and what he thought his life would be like. Genuine care, community, and people who are truly there for one another are something that’s needed, and it’s something that he doesn’t have in his life. Aisha is one of the only people who shows him a possibility and a version of that.”