Interview – Silver Haze director Sacha Polak on making “a special project”

After making an impression on the festival circuit, Sacha Polak’s Silver Haze finally lands in UK cinemas this week.

It re-unites her with actor Vicky Knight, who starred in the director’s first English language film, Dirty God, five years ago. This time round, the story takes direct inspiration from Knight’s own life, drawing on her own background and family. She plays Franky, who combines a nursing career with holding together a chaotic family. But beneath the surface, she boils with anger about a fire in her childhood which left her with scars. Finding herself attracted to one of her patients, Florence (Esme Creed-Miles), the two become close and go to stay with her grandmother. It’s there that Franky discovers the kind of open-minded surrogate family she needs so much to help her on the road to confronting her past.

In this exclusive interview, Polak reflects on Knight’s reaction to making a film so closely based on her own story, as well as her sister and brother playing key roles in the film. For Polak, it was “a special project.” Its low budget meant there was no money for make up artists or costume designers, so Knight and her sister, Charlotte, both wore their own clothes and did their own make up, something the director felt gave even more honesty to their performances. A lengthier shooting schedule also allowed time to experiment, with the result that a number of scenes were wholly improvised by what she describes as “a terrific cast.”

Silver Haze is released in cinemas on 29th March | Read our review of the film.