Both The Interview and Falsified are very different films, but both feature Ashley Tabatabai working in multiple capacities, both in front of the camera and behind the scenes.

Written by Tabatabai and directed by Stefan Fairlamb, The Interview is described as “a dark ‪comedy about a down on his luck man who has a job interview with an opportunistic ‪entrepreneur that takes him out of his comfort zone.

The entrepreneur, played by Tabatabai, is the cool and confident owner of an online content company, while Scott Michael Wagstaff plays the neurotic man down on his luck he meets in a cafe for a somewhat enigmatic interview.

Their meeting calls to mind the nervous comedy of Woody Allen and the sinister shallowness of David Cronenberg, but The Interview is not as funny or as purposefully creepy as the works of either filmmaker. That said, the film makes good use of minimal elements – four speaking parts, two mains and a stripped-down script.

Tabatabai does well to bring all of the film’s elements back together for a well-constructed ending. Yet given everything that came before, it feels like it’s going to go into deeper territory than it actually does. By the end, the film feels a bit gimmicky and somewhat lightweight and unsubstantial as a result.

Falsified is the more serious of the two films, where Tabatabai shares directing duties with Fairlamb and again writes and stars, this time as Javier, a young man aggressively pursued by the elderly Henry (Mitchell Mullen), who believes him to be his long-lost son.

Javier, it transpires, is one of Los Ninos Robados, or the Lost Children of Francoism – one of hundreds of thousands of children who, under the orders of Spanish dictator Francisco Franco, were taken from parents who held oppositional views. The most fortunate of which were put into homes or forcibly adopted.

This feels like a personal story for both the filmmakers, who seem to be using the film as an effort to bring more attention to this unfortunate chapter in recent Spanish history – one that must be especially painful for those who fell victim to it and can’t move on until they have closure, like Henry in the film.

He presents Javier with all the facts and evidence that says he is his son, but it turns out he is not the first person to claim his parentage. This is the most intriguing part of the film, the fight between feelings and the truth – is he really the son or does Henry just want him to be?

Had it left it there, Falsified would have been a more interesting and though-provoking film. Portraying victims of a tragedy like this with missing parents and children they will never find is an intriguing, and unfortunately real, angle. However, that’s not what this film about. It does go on to wrap everything up (fairly predictably) with an ending that feels like a let down.

Still, there is a lot to admire about Falsified. It’s brilliantly photographed by Adam Lyons, which adds to the sobmre and mysterious tone of the film, and is complimented by Tabatabai’s script that, for better or worse, skimps on explanations and lets the visuals and character interactions tells the story. It’s just a shame it’s not brave enough to avoid a conventional structure.