Dutch writer/director Sacha Polak made her English-language debut in 2019 with Dirty God, a critically acclaimed drama in which newcomer Vicky Knight played an acid-attack victim undergoing treatment for her burns. Having struck up a close friendship, the filmmaker and actor have collaborated again, this time with a story partly inspired by Knight’s own life. The plot follows Franky (Knight), a nurse who forms a close connection with her troubled patient Florence (Esmé Creed-Miles) after a suicide attempt. Silver Haze premiered at Berlin last year and is now set to be released in UK cinemas. I was fortunate to sit down with Sacha Polak to discuss the film…
Your latest film is set across two working-class British towns and has great specificity when it comes to the tone you achieve. It reminded me of the social-realist style of Ken Loach. How did you approach this as an international filmmaker?
This film is loosely based upon Vicky’s own life, and she comes from Dagenham. I got to know her really well on the previous film and we travelled all over the world together. Seeing her and her family and how much drama there was, but also how much love and laughter there was -that really inspired this film. For me it was also obvious that we would shoot it in Dagenham. I think Ken Loach is amazing and I love his work, but I also felt like I wanted the look to be more than only social-realism. I wanted it to be more colourful.
I really liked the colour palette used in the drug-infused sequences in particular. Obviously the film is named after a strain of marijuana – it feels like Franky and Florence are escaping their reality when they smoke. Can you tell me more about these scenes and what inspired the style of them?
I think Vicky was the inspiration for everything down to how it looked. Telling a story that’s about your first big love isn’t grey, you know. That’s completely colourful, as is going to a rave for the first time or using drugs for the first time. In that sense, that’s what I wanted the audience to feel so that inspired the impressionistic use of colour. We were limited in the sense that there we had one lighting person and decided to shoot almost everything with a steady cam. I wanted it to be small but I didn’t want it to look like a documentary, so I didn’t want it to just be running after lead actress. I always make a booklet with every scene and it has like inspirations like certain colours that I love or a photo or a painting.
As you mentioned earlier, the Silver Haze story is partly inspired by Vicky’s own life. What was your process around writing the script?
After Dirty God premiered in Sundance, we travelled all over the world together and we were sort of fantasising about doing another film together. I found her so inspiring and she’s such a great actress and I thought like, ‘Okay, let’s do it but let’s do it more about your own life’. I started interviewing her when we were in Poland or in Australia or wherever and on long flights I would just let her talk and then afterwards I wrote the script with some of the things that Vicky experienced and things that are completely fabricated. Some parts of the film were really strict to the script and some parts are improvised. The cast gave so much to work from and so many fun things that I could have never made up. I wanted to make a film that was reflected how I experienced Vicki’s life; there were a lot of things happening at the same time and that was something that I felt like I wanted to convey. It was important to have freedom.
I can imagine the logistics around filming on a low budget with improvised scenes was challenging…
We were with a very small crew and we didn’t have makeup or wardrobe or trailers or anything. Sometimes when we were shooting during the day and we wouldn’t know where we would shoot in the evening. It was chaos, complete chaos but I loved the process and I had the script that was my guideline. There are scenes like for instance when Vicky and Esmé are fighting and then they really went all the way! I enjoyed that a lot and the crew and cast were really tight and we’re still really, really close. They’re all my friends and they gave everything but I don’t know if I would do it again like this; this is a thing that I think you do once in your life.
What was it about working with Vicky the first time that made you want to work so closely with her again?
She’s not afraid and I think she’s really smart and wants to explore things with no fear and no vanity. She’s willing to go on an adventure with me and I think that’s very valuable between an actor and director. You trust each other and then you can try to make something beautiful together.
I note that you’d worked with Esmé previously on the Hanna television series. She has great acting genes from her brilliant parents (Samantha Morton & Charlie Creed-Miles) – what has been your experience in working with her?
Esmé has such a presence on screen. She just has this sort of star quality. On Hanna, I asked her ‘do you want to be on this crazy film with me? You won’t have all the crew and trailers and everything that we have here. You would bring your own clothes and do your own make up’ and she was up for it! She gave so much and her music is used in the film too.
What did you learn from working on a big TV series like Hanna that you could bring to your indie feature filmmaking?
Doing these big TV shows is really like having film school basically and getting paid for it as well. I learned so much from doing the TV shows. I’d never done action before and you have a great cast and a great team that helps you do it. You have to work really fast and you have to prepare very thoroughly. Getting to know somebody like Esmé and being able to bring her to your feature is like a big gift, you know. As a director, if you only do feature films you’re like the least experienced person on the set because you maybe make one every four years so by doing TV you get a lot of experience.
If you could cast anyone in your dream feature, who would it be?
I’m writing a horror film with a friend at the moment about my own divorce so I’ve been dreaming about who I would like to be in it. I’d want the French actress Marion Cotillard…and I’d want Mark Ruffalo! I am a big fan of Poor Things and thought he was great in it!
Silver Haze – In cinemas 29th March
Cinema Perspective 