‘At every moment and with each new breath, one should be renewed and renewed again.

There is only one way to be born into a new life:

To die before death.’

So goes the epigraph of Dan Pringle’s new buried-alive survival thriller, Die Before You Die. The film stars Ziad Abaza (also the film’s co-writer) as hot-headed influencer Adi, and Mim Shaikh (known for Queenie and What’s Love Got to Do with It?) as Adi’s best friend and ultimate hype-man, Maz. In a perilous bid for online fame, they embark on the ultimate social media challenge: being buried alive for three days. The stage is thereby set for a harrowing ordeal intertwining psychological tension, spiritual awakening, and social critique.

In the age of relentless online visibility, Die Before You Die provides a sobering lens into the dangers of ego-driven digital culture. As Adi grapples with his internal voice, represented by the monkey figurine Oge – both his harshest critic and his most cunning manipulator – the story reveals how easily our self-worth can become entangled with external approval. At its core, the film draws on the Sufi philosophy of ‘ego death’, embodied in the inclusion of a Sufi order as the facilitators of Adi and Maz’s burial and the titular concept of ‘dying before you die’. This ancient teaching (often attributed to the thirteenth-century poet Rumi and his spiritual instructor Shams Tabrizi), juxtaposed against the superficiality of influencer culture, invites viewers to confront their own need for validation and control.

I had the privilege of talking with Dan Pringle, Ziad Abaza and Mim Shaikh about the deeper themes of Die Before You Die. We explored what inspired the film, the challenges of its creation, and the impact the team hopes to achieve.

A Story Born of Extremes

Bringing Die Before You Die to life required a delicate balance of contemporary social critique and the profound teachings of Sufism. Director Dan Pringle and co-writer Ziad Abaza approached this challenge with meticulous care, striving to maintain authenticity while making the story relatable to a modern audience.

The screenplay underwent significant evolution during development. Early drafts featured an average working man as the protagonist, but the introduction of a social media influencer transformed the narrative, as Abaza explained: “Introducing the social media influencer not only made almost any stunt possible […] but the ego-motivation of many such content creators also brought with it such a stark and interesting contrast to the more ascetic and spiritual themes of the film.”

This shift not only expanded the narrative possibilities but also enabled the filmmakers to explore the unsettling reality of fame’s allure. The plot’s plausibility was a frequent topic of discussion. Pringle recalled: “We were constantly talking about whether this was plausible. Would somebody actually do this to themselves?”

The answer lay in the obsessive need for relevance among influencers, making the protagonist’s reckless decisions feel disturbingly real. This modern angle, however, needed to harmonize with the subtle spirituality of Sufism. As Pringle elaborated: “We hit on this idea of a particular type of social media personality influencer [that] allowed us to tackle the spiritual side of the film through a modern lens and give it a contemporary sense.”

At its core, the film juxtaposes the transient nature of social media validation with the timeless wisdom of surrender and self-transcendence advocated by Sufism. Abaza drew inspiration from Islamic scholars like Al-Ghazali, incorporating spiritual practices into the narrative: “I really love the notion of struggling against the self with the four swords of discipline: hunger, sleeplessness, solitude, and silence, which made it into the feature.”

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A central theme of the film is ‘ego death

For Mim Shaikh, who plays Maz, this exploration of ego resonated personally. He reflected on how the film reshaped his perspective on self-presentation online: “Before doing this film, I was very much trying to build a mask around me and all the things that I do […] After doing this film, I don’t really have that much interest in living up to my own or other people’s expectations.”

Visualizing ‘Ego Death’

A central theme of the film is ‘ego death,’ the process of relinquishing illusions of control. Abaza and Pringle wove this abstract concept into the protagonist’s harrowing journey. For Adi, being buried alive becomes an allegory for shedding ego and confronting vulnerability. As Abaza described: “There are moments in Adi’s journey when things just don’t go his way; this is a big part of ‘ego death’ […] going through a bunch of circumstances that are not at all according to your own plan or according to your sense of control and then coming to terms with this. Adi goes through numerous occasions of this […] He’s no longer in control. This can be quite shattering for a towering ego.”

Adi’s struggle unfolds both spiritually and psychologically, reflected in his battle with his inner voice – a cunning and manipulative entity that fuels his illusions of grandeur. Pringle elaborated: “That voice can be quite manipulative. It can be quite cunning in the way it gets you to buy into your sense of self […] It bigs you up, self-inflates you, and gives you that sense of overconfidence. It puts you at the centre of the universe and makes you feel a million bucks.

Ultimately, the film invites viewers to reflect on their relationship with self-image, mortality, and the pursuit of validation. Abaza hopes its universal themes will resonate widely: “We tried our best to make the film as universal as possible […] Hence, we focused on death and the ego; two things which all of humanity needs to engage with in one way or another.”

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Die Before You Die offers more than just entertainment.

Similarly, Shaikh expressed his hope that audiences might reconsider the pitfalls of social media: “I would hope that audiences could learn that you don’t need to get your validation from external sources outside of your own self. Maz went from being someone who needed validation from his YouTube audience and his friend to surrendering and allowing his inner world to work for him instead. By that, I mean he started to listen to his true self, not the self that he needed to uphold in order to get attention from people that he didn’t even know.”

A Sobering Reflection

With its compelling fusion of gripping thriller and profound spiritual exploration, Die Before You Die offers more than just entertainment. By situating ancient wisdom within a hyper-modern context, Pringle and his team have delivered a film that is as thought-provoking as it is visceral. The lesson of Die Before You Die is universal: to truly live, one must first let go of the self that clings to illusions. This is not merely a cautionary tale about the internet; it’s a wake-up call to examine how we define our worth in a world increasingly shaped by fleeting digital applause.

Die Before You Die is now available on Amazon Prime.

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