18th british shorts, berlin
nick tree
if not now, when?
FESTIVAL SCREENING
Sun 26.1. 20:00 / City Kino Wedding
CAST
Kate Dickie - Ruth
Jamie Sives - Thomas
David Carlyle - Sean
JAN, 9, 2025
Ruth will stop at nothing to realise the possibilities of time travel, it soon transpires that a darker reality is at the core of her obsession.
Hi Nick, how does it feel to be at the 18th British Shorts, Berlin, with your latest short film?
It feels really special, exactly 10 years on from my last selection at the British Shorts actually. We knew that a 30 minute short film with a weighty subject matter was a lot for any film festival to take on, so we don't take any of these selections lightly, it's genuinely an honour to be amongst some incredible films in the year that everyone seemed to finally make the short film that they wrote in lockdown.
If Not Now, When? has had an amazing festival run, winning Most Diverse Work and Best Performance at NEIFF 2024. What has it meant to you to get this type of recognition for your film?
We partnered with an amazing charity called 'Younger People with Dementia' in order to get this film made, so recognistion of any kind is a brilliant thing because it means that we get to shout about the important work that they do and hopefully shine a brighter light on the difficulties faced by people who are living with early onset dementia. My aim was always just to tell a very personal story with integrity and honesty in order to hopefully resonate with a wider audience. Awards and festivals are all great opportunities to reach new people with your work.
How important are festivals like British Shorts, Berlin, in creating a platform for short films and filmmakers?
Yeah, I think they're important. I particularly love the British representation in such an artistically renowned city as Berlin. Again, it's the excitement of having a culturally different audience see something that was written in a little bedroom in Guildford, Surrey, a story that was written without any hope of it being made, let alone watched by a bunch of people in Germany.
Short films are a vital medium in the film industry, yet there are few opportunities for the public, outside of festivals, to see them. What more can be done to make short films more visible and accessible to the wider cinema audiences?
This is very pertinent for me as I try to find a permanant home for our film. I think streaming platforms could do well to embrace short films a little more. The short film is such a beautiful format for impactful, digestible and clever storytelling in a world of increasingly bum-numbing 3 and half hour films and 9 series of episodic TV shows, both of which I love by the way. I purposefully kept my film at a chunky 30 minute duration because I genuinely thought it was respectful to Ruth's story. If a 30 minute film can make me think and move me to tears then it means as much to me as any feature film or TV show. It's a true art form and I do think that there is no-where near enough funding opportunities, because there are no-where near enough high profile homes for short films beyond a very saturated internet.
Can you tell me how If Not Now, When? came about?
It's a story about a woman in her 50's who is living with early onset dementia and obsessively trying to crack the idea of regressive time travel to no avail. The idea really came to me when I started to think about memories as our only true way of travelling back through time, I then took that ability, to make memories, away from the character as a way of showing her tragic obsession with wanting to go back in time to change her past. It's also a sort of cautionary tale about how everyone has a reason that is relatable for their, sometimes extreme actions, you just need to go back to the point in their life where an external influence changed them as a person, to fully understand them.
What was the inspiration behind If Not Now, When?
My initial inspiration came from cleaning out my Wife's Grandad's flat and finding all of these notes that he'd written to help him get through every day. Notes such as 'Don't put milk in the kettle' and 'Don't call Jane after 9pm'. I found these to be really moving and so I wrote them down in my phone and these are the actual notes that we've used on many of Ruth's dymo labels. I then started thinking about my own mental fragility and how I can't remember much of my own kid's birthday parties for example, and that really frightened me.
The beauty of lockdown was that I suddenly had all this time to begin writing this story out and even researching heavily into time travel and Chronosthesia. It was all a bit of a blur from there on in to be honest.
What is the role that music plays in your visual work?
I come from a music background, I played in bands all my adult life and still do, so music plays a huge part in all of my work. I worked closely with my long time collaborator, Tom Keech, who is an incredible composer. We knew we wanted something raw with all the imperfections of a human playing every instrument as a way of creating a backdrop to this very weathered Scottish setting and this, far from perfect, protagonist. I also wanted a grandiosity to the soundscape which Tom nailed I think, he really lifts us up and slams us back down to reality as we experience Ruth's numerous challenges (not wanting to ruin the film for anyone) Essentially, the music became a character in itself, which I know is a cliche, but it really did. It gives the film way more heart and celebrates the power of human-created-art with all the beautiful squeaks and pops left in. Tom did an unbelievable job.
What were the biggest challenges you faced making If Not Now, When?, and what was the message you wanted to convey with this film?
The biggest challenge was getting funding if I'm being honest. As I've mentioned, short films are difficult to fund becuase there's very little back-end to be made in the current system. I'd based this ambitous film on a tiny, remote island off the west coast of Scotland and we had way more locations than most short films do, so it was expensive to make comparitively.
In terms of messaging, I just really wanted to broaden the understanding of how difficult it is for, not only the person living with dementia, but also the loved ones. It's the cruelest of diseases in many ways because it takes away the person's identity, their independence and over time it decays their personality as well. I wanted to create more empathy and tried to do that through a beautiful and super smart character who should never be patronised.
Did you give yourself and your cast much flexibility with the text once you started shooting, or did you prefer to stick to what was planned?
Yeah, the dialogue stayed pretty true to script, but we certainly left ourselves some wiggle room with regards to dropping scenes and re-writing certain bits to adapt on the day, we had to, mainly for timing reasons. You could find me at 2am most nights, up on that island, just scribbling out and re-writing certain parts of the shot list or script as my brain woke me up constantly. It's not healthy, but it's interesting because I thought we were so overprepared and we were, but these things have a way of evolving.
You have a hypersensitive approach to your storytelling, which can be quite exposing for a creator. Do you have any apprehensions about creating work that comes from your desire to explore human connections?
It's all I've got really, it's inherent within me. I always thought of my sensitivities as a weakness growing up, but about 12 years ago I realised that I could use my flawed personality as a strength when it came to writing and making films, so that's what I decided to do and it's been a joy. Working with Kate Dickie was like finding a kindred spirit, partly because I think we both put a lot of ourselves into our work and sacrifice a lot for the sake of the final piece, sometimes our own health, which is a working progress. We also really bonded over our constant pursuit for working with kind and honest people ahead of everything else. I made a friend for life there.
How much did your background as an award-winning commercial director help prepare you for writing and directing If Not Now, When?
I've always tried to create more narrative-lead films within my commercial work, so that did certainly help me to develop a style and hone my voice as a director. That said, the ambition of this script and getting to work with the calibre of talent that we managed to cast, made this project feel very different to any commercial project that I've taken on. For example, I've never cried on set before and I've never seen so many people cry on set before. I loved that we did, it meant that we were all part of something important and were creating something with real heart and for the love of the craft.
Was there any one scene that was particularly tricky for you to shoot?
All the stuff on the boat was tricky, it's a tiny 12-person boat which takes the residents over to the island every day, so that was a challenge with kit. The car crash was also a lot of work and we'd run out of money by that point, so it took a lot of ingenuity from our DOP Aadel Nodeh-Farahani and our 2 producers Andrew Rawson and Neil Edson. In the script I'd had to settle on the classic 'cut to black', directly after Ruth swerves the car, but Neil had experience using a miniature car with specific lenses, so we gave that a go and it worked an absolute treat, it just took a lot of go's and a lot of mowing grass to avoid scale up issues.
"I discovered that I can adapt on the spot with regards to re-writes and logistically motivated tweaks."
How essential is the creative collaboration between you and your team when shooting a project like this?
The best way I can describe it is, it feels like being part of an orchestra. The collaboration is everything, more so than music in many ways. You can do a solo performance of a song and whilst it's different, it's still the same song and can still resonate. With film, you don't have a final piece without everyone's involvement, without everyone's specific skillset and creative energy. It's essential to the final creation and the feeling that you get when you watch it back. We had a crew who put themselves on this tiny island in the middle of a freezing February, purely because they love what they do and they believed in the project and the themes that we were exploring. It's an amazing thing when you look back, at just how much of a group effort it was. I would work with all of them again in a heartbeat.
You have an incredible cast led by BAFTA winner Kate Dickie. Had you had an idea of who you wanted to play Ruth?
I wrote the entire script with Kate Dickie in mind, I loved all her work, I loved her dedication to the craft and I loved her presence on screen, particularly in Andrea Arnold's Red Road and so I just went for it and wrote the character as being played by Kate in my head from day one. I never actually thought we'd get her on board, but when I sent her agent the script I didn't realise that Kate has a very personal connection to Ruth and so it felt very serendipitous for both of us.
Have you always had a passion for filmmaking?
I have, I studied film at University and I worked in a cinema before that, so the dream was always to make a living out of film making. I think it's the combination of creating an interesting and engaging visual narrative set against powerful soundscapes and music which I'm drawn to the most. It's all my passions rolled into one beautiful art form.
What do you think you discovered about yourself as a filmmaker during the making of this film, and what would you say has been the biggest lesson you’ve taken from this project?
I discovered that I can adapt on the spot with regards to re-writes and logistically motivated tweaks. I look back at some of the behind the scenes footage and feel quietly proud of how I managed some of those situations, particularly when you have so many people waiting on your notes or answers. The biggest lesson has been to trust my instincts and work with people who have kindness in their bones, because when the shit hits the fan, those are the people you want stood next to you, with the greater good of the project in their sights.
Moving forward, what themes and subjects are you looking to explore with future films?
I'm currently writing (procrastinating over) my first feature length script which explores a few themes, such as traumatic mutism and the catastrophising nature of 24 hour rolling news, so I'm getting deeper into some more weighty subjects and working that one out as we speak which is just beginning to get interesting.
Who are some of the filmmakers that have inspired you?
David Fincher and Spike Lee were my big inspirations at the beginning, I feel like I absorbed more from those two than any other individual director in my formative years. Since then I've admired people like Paul Thomas Anderson, Kelly Reichardt, Andrea Arnold, Luca Guadagnino and Todd Field, to name a few that I can think of right now.
What has been the best piece of advice you’ve been given on your filmmaking journey?
A now-good-friend once told me to stop spreading myself so thin and instead spend my time focussing on defining my unique voice and always create work that only I could make. He gave up his time to meet me for the first time and this advice lead me to completely change my focus and essentially encouraged me to write this film. He also reminded me to harness my sensitivities. Thanks Stephen.
And finally, what message would you want your audiences to take away from If Not Now, When?
I think, just keep your mind open to the fact that everyone has a reason that I'm sure you can relate to, for their sometimes extreme actions, you just need to be sympathetic to understanding where they've come from and what they've experienced. Hopefully that is a perspective that allows for a more harmonious and less judgemental society.