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9 months ago
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With his debut feature Last Swim, an ambitious and quietly radical portrait of young life in London, Sasha Nathwani has achieved one of the most difficult tasks for a new filmmaker: cutting through with a festival audience.
Last Swim debuted last week at the Berlin Film Festival, where it opened the festival’s Generation sidebar. The pic has been one of the more buzzy titles here on the ground in the German capital and is considered a frontrunner to pick up some gold when awards are announced this weekend.
Set over a sweltering exam results day in London, the pic follows Ziba, a promising British-Iranian teen, as she leads her friends on an eventful journey across the city. Despite the celebratory atmosphere, Ziba struggles to retain her characteristic optimism as she finds herself battling the fears and secrets she’s been hiding from her friends. As day turns to night, Ziba has no choice but to confront her reality, changing the course of her life and the future she has been planning.
“We were crafting the scripts in the midst of the pandemic when young people all over the world were having their seminal years snatched away. So that was one of the conceits of the script,” Nathwani told Deadline. “How would you reclaim your youth if you could?”
Nathwanin co-wrote the screenplay with Helen Simmons (Hoard), who also produced alongside Campbell Beaton, Nisha Mullea, Bert Hamelinck, Sorcha Shepherd, and James Isilay. Exec producers are Ruby Walden, Kelly Peck, Jess Ozeri, Max Fisher, and Liam Johnson. Paris-based Indie Sales is handling world rights.
With a successful bow at Berlin, Nathwani and Last Swim join a recent flurry of debut British indie features like Molly Manning Walker’s How To Have Sex, Charlotte Wells’s Aftersun, and Rye Allen-Miller’s Rye Lane that have lit up A-list international festivals. Unlike the others, however, Last Swim was produced completely independent of public money in the UK. Below, Nathwani speaks to us about the process of bringing the feature to the big screen, the response out of Berlin, and what he has planned next.
DEADLINE: At festivals, there is always a film you didn’t have on your radar that, by the end, creeps up on you. For me, that’s been Last Swim. Several people spoke to me about the film and implored me to see it.
SASHA NATHWANI: That’s amazing to hear. A few people have said that to me. You can’t buy that kind of publicity. It’s not really about making a certain kind of film. It’s about making the right kind of film to capture the imagination at the right time. For one reason or another, Last Swim seems to be doing that. So we’re all over the moon.
DEADLINE: This is your first feature, so can you tell me a little about your background and how you got into the business?
NATHWANI: I was born and raised in London. I always wanted to be a filmmaker, so I went to film school in New York, moved back to London, and worked my way up from runner to director’s assistant. I started directing in my mid-20s, music videos, and fashion films. I slowly transitioned to advertising and commercials. The goal was always to end up doing features, but I found the transition from short to long form challenging. It took me about four or five years to make that kind of sideways step. I started writing the script in 2020 with Helen Simmons. In 2022, I changed my commercial representation to Caviar, where I met Nisha, who became one of the lead producers on the project. Caviar had never done anything in London. It just so happened the script was the kind of project that they were looking for. We had already done the rounds with the public funders. We always got into the last rounds but never quite got through. So Caviar came in and took that position.
DEADLINE: Why did you struggle to transition from shorts to features?
NATHWANI: The criteria is completely different. I thought I had the right body of work going into meetings with the public funders. I’ve done music videos for big artists. I’ve done huge global campaigns. I’ve done a Superbowl commercial for New Balance with Coco Gauff and Jaden Smith. But I understand this now, but they weren’t interested in that. They wanted to know that I could work over 90 minutes with character. Also, I’ve noticed, especially now taking a film to Berlin, that we just don’t have that much money in the UK compared to France, Germany and Italy.
DEADLINE: Do you feel a sense of vindication towards the public funders?
NATHWANI: A little bit. No one likes a smart ass. We’ve all eaten a fair slice of humble pie in our lives, so I get it. There are so many brilliant projects in the UK. A few people said to us that if we were willing to change the location or find a way to shoot in mainland Europe, it would be easier to finance the film because we’d be eligible for EU funds. But it had to be London. The city is so central to the story. At one point, we were going to shoot our interiors in Europe because we would have taken advantage of bigger tax breaks. But it didn’t make sense to break up the production that way.
DEADLINE: You mentioned New York, and I know you went to NYU. Can you talk about that experience? And what are the differences between operating in the UK and U.S. systems?
NATHWANI: My favorite filmmakers growing up were New Yorkers, so that’s why I went to NYU. Martin Scorsese, Spike Lee, Woody Allen, Oliver Stone and Darren Aronofsky. I knew the school had such a rich history. But when I went there, if I’m being completely honest, I thought it was an elitist environment. I found that people weren’t necessarily there because they were talented but because they could afford to be there. It was so prohibitively expensive. I was there on a 50% scholarship. I then had to ask my dad to take out a massive loan, and I took out some financial aid. I was in debt for a long time. When I returned to London, nobody in the industry cared that I had a degree. I had to work my way up. If I could go back in time, I don’t know if I would do it the same way. However, I did notice in America that being a British filmmaker in the American system meant that your head pokes up a little bit more than everyone else. People seem to be very impressed with British filmmaking talent. People listen when we speak.
DEADLINE: Your lead actress Deba Hekmat. Is this her first film? I’ve never seen her before.
NATHWANI: This is her second film. She was in Hoard, directed by Luna Carmoon. I worked with Deba when she was 17 on a music video, and I remember she had a striking look. I didn’t know that she could act, but she had the right look for the character. When we were casting for the film, looking for British-Iranian actors in London she popped up on the list. But her background is in modeling. She was street cast at a modeling agency when she was 14 or 15. She had never done any formal acting training. She sent in a tape. And then she came in for a callback. She was one of three actors that came back in. She just had this incredible talent for communicating a lot with her eyes. So she won us over that day. And then it was just supporting her, giving her some training, and building the team around her. It was a risk giving the lead role to someone who had never really acted in this way before. But I think she ended up doing a tremendous job, and I’m proud of her. She’s got a stellar career ahead.
DEADLINE: What do you plan on doing next?
NATHWANI: I’d love to shoot my next project in the U.S. I want to dance between the UK and the U.S. Each project on my slate, and they’re all in the very early stages of development, are films like Last Swim that explore the duality of identity and people who wear different hats depending on what kind of room they’re in. This film is a love letter to London but also an exploration of the power of Iranian women. The next one is going to be the opposite. It’s going to be a film about about toxic masculinity.
