ANAHEIM, Calif. — In writer-director Louis Paxton’s quirky new comedy, actor Domhnall Gleeson plays Daniel, a regional council worker sent from Scotland to an isolated isle to evict and bring its only two residents back to the mainland.

But siblings Isla and Sandy, played by Gayle Rankin and Grant O’Rourke, have no intention of leaving, and, in fact, have been training for the very day an “incomer” like Daniel might arrive.

And so the moment Daniel sets foot on shore, Isla and Sandy spring into action, hurling rocks at his noggin, screeching like human-sized gulls, and dancing in what they assume is a fearful manner in strange costumes made of feathers and bones.

What follows is a sweet and tender tale that deftly balances the silly and sublime.

Daniel, Isla and Sandy form unlikely bonds, though the mainlander and the islanders remain mystified by much about each other. When the Northeastern Scottish Council sends some muscle to finish the job for Daniel, the trio already on the island must make life-changing choices.

At the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, “The Incomer” won the NEXT Innovator Award, the jury citing the movie as “as a boldly original comic fable that blends folklore with formal playfulness. Deadpan humor, animation, and myth collide – proof that fearless invention can be both uproarious and deeply humane.”

“The Incomer” opens in theaters on Friday, Sept. 25.

In a Zoom interview edited for length and clarity, Gleeson, Rankin and O’Rourke talked about what drew them to the project, what made them laugh out loud during filming, and the importance of stories to the characters of “The Incomer.”

Q: I’m always curious what makes people say “yes” to a project. What appealed to you, Gayle?

Gayle Rankin: I’d never read anything this unique and in a Scottish voice. He [Paxton] has his unique attack on storytelling, and is such a cinephile and well-read. He’s worked on this screenplay for so long; it’s really been such a labor of love. You could tell that when you turned the first page.

It was just so beautifully made. And what a character. She’s just like a kind of ballsy, ferocious, unapologetic, stubborn, insane, kind of beautiful human being, you know? And gets to kind of be a leading lady in her own way, too. I was just like, what a gift.

Q: Grant, you worked with Louis on the story, didn’t you?

Grant O'Rourke: Louis’s my BFF. We’ve been working together for like 20 years. I was in his grant film when he was at [university], and we’ve done short films together. We’ve written short films that got nominated for a BAFTA Scotland award. So I’ve seen every iteration of the screenplay. He let me feed into the character of Sandy, and by the end of it, we would do joke passes and things like that.

So I’ve been living with this play as long as Louis has. I haven’t done as much work as he has, but I certainly wanted to do it as much as he did. It was a real dream come true that we got to make it at all, to be honest.

Domhnall Gleeson: It was just a great script. It was as Gayle said, from the first page, it knew itself. It knew its own tone perfectly. And it was a chance to be in something that I thought would make people feel really good if we made it really well, and I think we did that.

Q: Each of your characters has little quirks and moments that are very funny. Give me an example of something your castmates did that cracked you up.

Gleeson: I sort of fast-forward through the bits I’m not in. [Rankin and O’Rourke laugh] So I’m just trying to think about bits that have the two of them. I can’t think of any.

No, anytime they’re fighting, anytime there’s big fighting and that stuff. They’re so ferocious, and I think it sums up their attitude towards the characters. Their willingness to go there for the characters in those fight scenes, when they [bleepin’] go. I love that. And then the small moments between them afterwards. The full-on and the small, right next to each other.

O'Rourke: Because obviously I saw everything that everyone was doing on the day I was unsurprised by how funny they were when I watched the film, because they were already cracking me up on set. The one thing that did take me by surprise was the animated sequences when I was telling the story – .

Rankin:– nothing to do with us. [She and Gleeson laugh]

Q: OK, Gayle?

Rankin: I still think of these moments a lot, Domhnall on the beach when he’s doing “Lord of the Local Authority” [Daniel mashes up his boring office life with “Lord of the Rings” for Sandy and Isla’s entertainment] when he was doing the paper jam. [A printer malfunction is acted out with all the thrills of an Orc attack] It’s [bleepin’] outrageous.

And Grant, I mean the scene with the milking of the seal with a toothbrush and the toothpaste. It was very difficult for me to manage to get through.

Q: I bet.

O'Rourke: And Domhnall’s dancing, by the way, is absolutely worth checking out.

Q: Storytelling, whether it’s Isla telling Sandy the folklore of the island, or Daniel trying to make his life more exciting by morphing it into “Lord of the Rings,” is a big part of the movie. How did you understand the importance of their stories?

Gleeson: Well, I mean stories are what makes like worth living. But when we meet these people, the stories they’ve told themselves, or have been told, are actually stopping them from growing. They’ve all retreated into their stories and have started to be defined by their own stories.

So I think it’s nice, because it shows you the mythic, beautiful aspect of storytelling, which we rely on all the time, and how it can be become dangerous to definite yourself by a story. That’s one of the themes of the film that I find incredibly interesting, and then the film wears it very lightly, which I think is one of the most important things to do. It’s not a message movie.

O'Rourke: Just as Domhnall was saying, perhaps the thing that’s maybe timely about it is that there’s a great power in the stories that we tell ourselves, and the stories that we tell each other. As you [Domhnall] pointed out, it sometimes gets in the way of you growing.

So if people can take anything from this, it’s that we don’t need to fall back on those stories we tell ourselves all the time. Sometimes it’s just as important to write new ones.

Rankin: I just feel that a lot of the time their stories also kept them alive. But at the same time they kept them where they were, absolutely. And I think the dichotomy of that, and the kind of friction of that, is something that Louis has woven so beautifully into the story. It’s really kind of subtle and beautiful because it’s always both.

And there’s not a kind of tied-up happy ending at the end of the film. I think it’s a beautiful ending. It’s not uncomplicated.

Q: My last thing, I have to ask about the kissing scenes with Isla and Daniel –

Rankin:– I knew you were going to say that. [She laughs]

Q:– and how she reacts each time.

Rankin: I loved it. I mean, it’s very kind of childlike and beautiful, and kind of gives you all the kind of funny, butterfly, crazy feelings about reimagining what it’s like to have those impulses for the first time. Like, this is a person who doesn’t know what this is. How lucky and cool that we get to explore that as actors, and so it was just truly fun and pleasurable to get to figure all that out. And it’s also very tender.

Gleeson: Exactly the same. I was conscious of the fact there was a power dynamic where Daniel had experience in the mainland, and that he had to be careful with this person who didn’t. So I was conscious of that.

But then there’s a moment that’s just connecting, and I love those moments. I feel like those moments, when they’re happening, make you feel good. And it’s a nice thing. It’s really not too sappy because Louis is clever enough to break it up. He gives us that beautiful moment of everyone’s first kiss is like a special, well, hopefully special, thing.

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