Mahershala Ali is swinging around a blade in Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother. That's not a nod to Ali's previous attachment to Marvel's Blade. It's of a piece with Ali's character, Latif, a devout Muslim who also happens to be a contract killer, though he fashions himself a righteous killer. Latif justifies his violence as divine retribution, dispensing victims he believes to have offended God. His sword, according to writer and director Bassam Tariq, is a part of Latif's code, a negotiation with his faith.

"You are forced to strike with intention when you use a sword," Tariq says, speaking in a recent interview in Toronto.

The film-maker seems equally purposeful in our conversation as we dive deep into his pulpy samurai-coded neo-western. In Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother, he grapples with grief, spirituality, violence and the culture in America writ large. The movie is a visceral and stylish genre thriller – think Steven Soderbergh's The Limey by way of Nicolas Winding Refn's Drive. It's also a textured portrait of Houston, navigating the city's cultural tapestry, but also the hostility and tension between its siloed faiths and ideologies. That's the conflict playing out between Ali's Latif, who's struggling to raise three kids on his own, and Jon Cho's Pastor Hwan, a militant evangelical Christian posting fire-and-brimstone sermons online while waging a heavily armed and indiscriminately brutal religious crusade.

"It feels a little different in Texas right now," Tariq says. He describes a palpable contrast between what he refers to as the "Mamdani era" in New York, where he lives, and Houston, where he grew up. "Something that I found particularly in Texas, where I started writing [this] is, whether they're religious or not, people are connected to the third spaces that are religious. All the social services are cut. So, if you're going to go hang out or play basketball, it'll probably be at a mosque or a church. You end up being a part of those communities. At the same time, you can start building dogmatic ideas, [like,] 'We're better than other people'. The nature of it has been really politicized. I think it's a dark moment right now."

Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother fearlessly cuts through that tension while capturing what makes those communities so vibrant and inspiring, and searching for a sense of hope in its heartfelt and intimate interrogation of faith and fatherhood. Those themes were especially important to he and Ali, Tariq says.

"We connected on these things while we were on this [other] movie together," says Tariq, referring to Marvel's Blade. "You might have heard of it."

He's being cheeky. The fallout from the aborted Blade reboot, which Tariq was set to direct, has become an intricate part of Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother's lore. Ali was attached for several years to star as Marvel's vampire-slayer, once played by Wesley Snipes. He only recently confirmed that the long-delayed reboot is simply not happening.

"We were very close to shooting when the pencils went down," says Tariq, describing the moment before he departed Blade in 2022. "Even though we had no script, which is why it shut down."

Tariq says they had their action sequences all planned out, following a year and a half of prep that included extensive fight training and choreography for Ali. That was Marvel's process at the time: the action comes first, allowing time for VFX and set design, and the rest comes after.

"It was like Bollywood, dude," he says today. "You have dance scenes. Figure out all the choreography. And then we'll figure out what the story is later … Now [Marvel's] not moving forward until they have a great script.

"I'm not trying to throw any shade on the writers," Tariq adds, adding that they had big shoes to fill given that the earlier Blade in his mind was a near-perfect movie. "They worked really hard on it. It's just a very tough thing to crack."

Tariq says he's more than at peace with how everything turned out. He's actually a squirrelly mix of nerves and excitement when I speak to him, the evening before Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother premieres at the Toronto film festival, his whispery voice barely containing that mix of emotion. He's taking a moment for this interview before settling back in with his family, including two kids aged 12 and nine.

They're in town for the occasion. They've been along for the whole ride, from the writing process in Houston to production in Atlanta, observing onset, during ADR and the sound mix. "I'm trying to just keep everyone close," he says, before tying that ethos to the story of Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother, which is ultimately about a father's wayward journey back to his kids. "You live the movie that you make."

The seeds for the film were planted after Tariq's own harrowing experience following the birth of his first child in 2014, when his wife had an infection that sent her to the emergency room. "My son was only breastfed at the time," says Tariq. "So I had to go around New York City trying to find breast milk for my son. I couldn't find it anywhere."

He poured that frantic search into the earliest iteration of Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother, which opens with Ali's Latif scouring for breast milk after his wife passes, while having the same crisis of faith that Tariq experienced.

"I remember that frustration," says Tariq. "I felt like that anger towards divinity. And then, of course, my son was fine. I realized all he really needed at that moment was just for me be present as a father. To have that miraculous moment when you hear your kid wanting you, that's something that I think about. I've been trying to contemplate: how do I put that in a story that's propulsive and exciting?"

Part of the solution came from working on Blade, where Tariq connected and collaborated with Ali, and mapped out those elaborate fight scenes, which would have been abandoned after Marvel pulled the plug. Instead, Tariq and Ali were able to salvage what they prepared for the superhero movie, and bring it all over to their more intimate film about a father discovering that his kids are his superpower.

"I'm a lot happier that I made this movie," says Tariq, comparing working within the Marvel machine versus having the freedom to really explore and express himself on Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother.

"As you know, with all these things, there are these massive systems, and they have so many stakeholders to please. It's just the nature of these things where they have to gross a certain [amount], and they have to look a certain way. There's a glossiness. And that's fine. I think some people have thrived in it and made some incredible films. For where I am right now, this feels like the right space. My mind and heart feel very much at ease."

• Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother is out now in the US, in Australia on 9 October and in the UK on 20 November