Filmmaker Sacha Polak and actress Vicky Knight first collaborated on the acclaimed feature Dirty God about an acid attack survivor, which world premiered at Sundance in 2019 and saw Knight named a Breakthrough Brit by BAFTA and receive both Best Actress and Most Promising Newcomer nominations at that year’s British Independent Film Awards (BIFA). Silver Haze, which won Knight the Teddy Jury Award at last year’s Berlin International Film Festival, sees the pair reunite for a compelling, intimate film inspired by elements of the actress’ own life.
Knight plays Franky, a 23-year-old nurse who lives with her large family in an East London borough. Obsessed with revenge and a need to assign blame and guilt for a traumatic fire that happened 15 years ago, Franky is unable to build a meaningful relationship until she falls in love with one of her patients, Florence (Esmé Creed-Miles). They escape to Southend in Essex, where Florence lives with her more open-minded patchwork family headed by the warm and forgiving matriarch, Alice (Angela Bruce). There, Franky finds the emotional shelter to deal with the grudges and scars of her past.
With Silver Haze now available on demand in the United States from Dark Star Pictures and opening in UK and Irish cinemas on Friday, March 29th from BFI Distribution, Sacha Polak and Vicky Knight speak exclusively with The Queer Review’s editor James Kleinmann about how the idea for the film came about, shooting on location in Dagenham, and working with a mix of professional and non-professional actors including members of Vicky’s own family.
James Kleinmann, The Queer Review: what acting experience did you have before you made Dirty God?
Vicky Knight: “I didn’t have any acting experience. I was a street cast. Sacha was looking for a person with real scars and she came across my story online. She pestered me about doing it for a year because I thought it was a scam to start with so I initially said, ‘no’. Then a casting director called me and Sacha came over from Amsterdam, and the rest is history.”
How do you reflect back on the experience of being in your first film?
Vicky: “Looking back, I’m aware of how I have evolved and become a lot stronger in myself. I’ve definitely improved a lot from the first film to now. With Dirty God I wasn’t a professional actress, I didn’t know how close the camera needed to be and why Sacha wanted to be so close to my scars and I freaked out. I didn’t like the fact that the whole world was going to see my scars on a giant screen because I’d hidden them for so long. Silver Haze was a much nicer experience for me. I could enjoy it a lot more because I understood the process this time.”
You mentioned covering your scars, and that is something that your character in Silver Haze, Franky, talks about, which leads us to the fact that Silver Haze is partly inspired by your own story. How did the idea to do something more personal based on Vicky’s life come about Sacha?
Sacha Polak: “With Dirty God, Vicky and I travelled all over the world together. We had so much fun making that film and we both really wanted to do something again. Vicky had so many interesting and beautiful stories about her own life and I was so impressed with her as an actress, but also by seeing her do the Q&As and talking to people and comforting people. So I thought, yes, let’s do another film but one more based upon her own life. I was inspired by Vicky and her family and the way that a lot of drama happened, but there was also a lot of laughter and love in it. That was something that I wanted to portray in the movie.”
As you had spent so much time time together, were you able to write the script quite organically rather than having to sit down and interview Vicky about her life?
Sacha: “We did do some, but they were more like funny interviews, like when we were at a festival in Poland and we were just having dinner and talking about it. So that did happen, but this film was very organic in the sense that I wanted to make something very free. I wrote a script, but based upon that there was a lot of improvisation. We shot it with a very small crew. It was very low budget, but I wanted us to have more time than usual so that we could experiment and play around with the material.”
Vicky, what was your reaction to doing something that was inspired by your own life?
Vicky: “I will be forever grateful, not many people get this opportunity. Sacha is one of my best friends and I was so lucky to have someone that I trust take on such a traumatic story and turn it into such a beautiful piece. I never expected it in my life.”
This wasn’t a movie version of your life where you were stepping onto soundstages. You were shooting it in the area where you grew up in Dagenham in London and Southend in Essex. What was it like shooting in those locations?
“It made it feel more real. Dagenham is not the most beautiful place to visit anyway, and our cinematographer Tibor Dingelstad really captured what Dagenham is like. It’s a bit rough and it’s not great, but filming there was just more personal. Most of the crew were Dutch and to be able to show them part of where I live was nice.”
Your sister, brother, and nephew are all in the film; what was that aspect like for you, acting alongside your family?
“I’m so proud of them all. It was really nice to be able to be like the big sister and just watch them. When we were at Berlin for the premiere, I took a step back and let them walk down the red carpet, which was really nice. It’s not just me that’s been through a lot, my whole family has been through it as well, so it’s nice to be able to share that experience with them. Now they want to be actors too. My brother is a roofer and he wants to be involved in films and my sister works in retail and any opportunity she can get she wants to jump in. It’s just great.”
What about for you Sacha, how was navigating that mix of non-professional and professional actors? I imagine that you’re always working with actors individually in any case because everyone works in a different way?
Sacha: “Yeah, it is exactly how you say it is, everybody works in a different way. Even if you have professional actors, you try to find out how to communicate with them, whatever they need, and how to get the best performance out of them. It’s not that different with professional or non-professional actors. Vicky was definitely one of the professional actors now, she’s been in two feature films and some short films.”
“Working with Vicky’s sister Charlotte was great and she’s so good in the in the film, but sometimes she would call Uber Eats and then all of a sudden she’d be eating McDonald’s underneath the set. I was like, ‘You cannot do this’, but she was like, ‘Yeah, I’m hungry.’ So that’s maybe the difference in that way! Then with Archie Brigden who plays Jack who is autistic, that was more confrontational with myself in learning that I needed to be very precise in the words that I use. Sometimes I was sloppy with words and then he wouldn’t understand what I was saying or he would take what I was saying literally and I had meant it figuratively. Those kinds of things were interesting but everybody was very lovely.”
“With Esmé Creed-Miles, I’d worked with her before on Hanna and told her, ‘We’re going to do this film—we won’t have any trailers, we won’t have any makeup, we won’t have any wardrobe even—but do you want to be part of it?’ She loved Vicky in Dirty God and she was like, ‘Yes!’ So that was great and Vicky and Esmé had such a great connection.”
Franky and Flo are both quite troubled characters in their own way so putting them together is really fascinating on screen. Vicky, what was it like for you working so closely with Esmé? I believe some of the dialogue between you was improvised?
Vicky: “Working alongside Esmé taught me a lot because she’s more advanced in her career than I am, and she said that I’ve taught her a lot too. It was a really nice connection. We clicked straight away when we first met and I don’t think there is a better actress that could have played Florence in the way Esmé played her. Every time she gave me something, I gave her something back and we’d just bounce off each other. Especially the scene where we’re in the bedroom arguing and it becomes quite nasty verbally. That slang and language comes from my mouth anyway—I’ve got really bad language, and I apologize for that—but the argument was improvised. I wanted that scene to feel as nasty and as uncomfortable as it could be. I’ve had that in past relationships and I think it’s quite important that it’s shown in a movie like this, because those kind of arguments do actually happen in relationships and it becomes a bit of a taboo subject. So it’s nice to be able to see the realism of it.”
“Franky wants to save everybody, but she realizes that she actually can’t save everybody. Alice has cancer and Florence is a very broken person and she can’t be saved. She could do well by Jack and be there as support for him, but then she realizes that actually it’s her and her family that needs saving, not someone else. So it’s a pretty hard film, but I’m very proud of it.”
In terms of the homophobia that we see Franky and Florence experience, was that one of the aspects that came from your own life and how important was it to you to include that in the film?
“It’s important to have that in there but it wasn’t necessarily from my own life story. There was an incident in London a few years ago where two girls got on a bus and they were really badly attacked by a group of young boys. They were made to kiss each other and perform inappropriate acts in public. So that’s where that idea came from. But the family homophobic abuse in the film from Franky’s mum and brother is completely dramatized. My mum is very, very accepting of my gayness and so is my family. I always say that I’m the rainbow sheep of the family.”
One thing that I really love about the film is that Franky is a queer character, but the film isn’t about her sexuality, it’s just one aspect of who she is.
Vicky: “It was important to have that in the film because it’s based loosely upon my life story. I am a gay woman and I have had boyfriends in the past and I think it’s important, especially for the younger generation with social media and the pressure to be perfect in coming out, to see the way I came out, which is the way Franky comes out in Silver Haze. I just thought, enough’s enough and I shoved it in people’s faces and sometimes that is the best way to go about it. If you beat around the bush, you get stuck and there are too many opinions. Just go straight to it and tell people if that’s what you are, that’s what you are. It’s okay to be gay.”
Was there anything that you saw on screen, either when you were growing up or more recently, that resonated with you or that you recognized yourself in?
“Femme is an amazing film. I will watch it again and again. How can I relate to that? Maybe the fear of coming out and being that open about your sexuality. The French film Blue is the Warmest Colour is an amazing film as well and I could relate to that.”
As Silver Haze is inspired by your life, was there a sense of catharsis or healing as you finished making it and now that you are sharing it with audiences?
“Yeah, it’s definitely made me realize that fighting for justice all my life isn’t going to get me anywhere. I need to live my life for what it is and be strong and be a voice for people that are stuck in their trauma still, because I was stuck in it for over 15 years. Sometimes you do have to give up a fight to be able to move on and that’s what I’ve realized with making this film.”
By James Kleinmann
Silver Haze is now available on demand in the United States from Dark Star Pictures and opens in UK and Irish cinemas this Friday, March 29th from BFI Distribution.
