ESSEX GIRLS

SILVER HAZE Sacha Polak reunites with Vicky Knight for a tale of revenge and reconciliation…

Vicky Knight and Esmé Creed-Miles play trauma survivors Franky and Florence

It was just memories and stories. And then I just glued them together,’ says Sacha Polak, the Dutch director back with her second English-set feature, Silver Haze. The first, acclaimed 2019 drama Dirty God, starred real-life burns survivor Vicky Knight as a woman overcoming severe injuries. Such was the bond created, Polak and Knight decided to collaborate again. ‘When we were travelling [for Dirty God], we were on planes and just chilling with each other,’ explains Knight. ‘We were talking about my life experience. She told me hers. And that’s how the script came about.’

In Silver Haze, Knight plays Franky, a nurse emotionally (and physically) scarred from a pub fire 15 years earlier who now seeks both answers and revenge. ‘I didn’t really want to make a very plot-driven film,’ explains Polak, adding that she looked to explore themes including ‘coming to terms with your past’ and ‘how you create your own family’. In this instance, Franky finds comfort in the arms of Florence (Esmé Creed-Miles), a woman who has her own mental health issues, from suicidal thoughts to eating disorders. While Polak also cast Knight’s real-life brother and sister, further blurring the lines between fiction and reality, the writer-director didn’t simply replay events from Knight’s past. ‘It is [about] more than the fire, which of course really happened [to Knight], but the way it happened is a different story.’ Instead, she mined Knight’s soul. ‘And so I think some of the emotions are real. So when Vicky, for instance, tells Esmé what happened when she was in the bar, I think there are real emotions. She was really talking about what happened to her.’

For Knight, it was a chance to build a character through improvisation, filming in an almost documentary-like style. ‘We didn’t have costume,’ she says. ‘We didn’t have make-up. The camera was there, but we were just so free with it.’ Of course, it helped that Knight was cast opposite Creed-Miles, whom Polak had previously directed on

‘I didn’t really want to make a very plotdriven film’

TV series Hanna. ‘She is so charismatic on screen,’ says the director. ‘She is very natural and willing to experiment. I just think she’s phenomenal.’

What wasn’t so phenomenal was the experience of filming, initially in Dagenham. ‘We stayed in a hotel in Romford and it was raining constantly – in the hotel!’ says Polak. ‘It was really like Fawlty Towers. I mean, they were pretending that they were fixing it. But we were there for months. And sometimes we heard screams.’ Then they relocated to Southend-on-Sea, ‘which was intense because knife fights happened there in the hotel… it was kind of tough.’ Making movies isn’t all glamour, which only adds to Polak’s unvarnished vérité style.

SILVER HAZE OPENS IN CINEMAS ON 29 MARCH. BFI DISTRIBUTION