If Elliott Hasler ever wondered why Mercedes Gleitze kept going in her quest to be the first British woman to swim the English Channel in the 1920s, experiencing all the physical impracticalities of navigating the waters himself as he sought to tell her story in “Vindication Swim,” he could understand the satisfaction of being able to ultimately pull it off as well.
“Any day that we were out at sea and actually got something in the can was a blessing,” says Hasler. “Sometimes we’d go out there, we’d get one or two shots and the wind would change, the tide would change, we’d have to abandon it because it wasn’t safe to continue any longer and some of those days we were out there for a 12-hour stint of non-stop shooting were certainly a tiring experience, but a very rewarding one as well.”
There were likely as many naysayers around Hasler as there once were around Gleitze as he began to mount the period epic shortly after turning 20 and known in his native England for being the youngest director to make a proper feature just a few years before with 2017’s “Charlie’s Letters” at just 17. However, Hasler could tap into the same level of determination as his heroine (played in the film by Kirsten Callaghan) who made eight attempts to swim the 21-mile body of water during breaks from her job as a stenographer and was doubted even after a successful swim when the way it was recorded was challenged, the validity thrown into doubt by a rival swimmer (Victoria Summer).
When the director didn’t have much of a budget to work with, or at least one that was anywhere near a fraction spent on the Disney-produced Daisy Ridley starrer “The Young Woman and the Sea” that was filming around the same time, he embraced time, periodically bringing the cast and crew out to the ocean to capture the momentous effort in brief bursts that would ultimately add up to an immersive experience worthy of the big screen. Yet beyond what happens on the water, Hasler considers the equally precarious path Gleitze had to tread on land as her example is used for an ongoing push by politicians for equality in England and when her swim is scrutinized, that potential progress is thrown into jeopardy for reasons well outside her control. After making waves in its native U.K., “Vindication Swim” is now arriving on American shores and recently Hasler spoke about getting to take a victory lap of his own after helming such an improbable production, getting the film’s period detail just right and how the film could feel like a little history repeating.
How did this come about?
I kind of stumbled across this story. I’d never heard of Mercedes Gleitze or her channel swims, but we share the same hometown of Brighton on the south coast of England and we were born exactly a century apart. She was born in 1900 and I was born in 2000, so there was a real synergy right from the outset that I really did feel that I should have, and I should have learned about this woman before. She was really this forgotten figure, so a lot of the impetus in making the film was to get her name back out there and celebrate it. But then for me more personally, I’ve grown up by the English Channel, so that’s always been an aspect of my life and the chance to go out and shoot the whole film on the water was quite a big draw as well.
Still, it’s notoriously difficult to film out on the water. What was it like to prepare for a shoot like this?
I think it was naïveté that helped us do that because if we were doing it now, knowing how difficult it is to do it, I don’t think we ever would have attempted it. But we had that innocence – or ignorance, really – at the beginning of the film. The first day we went out there, for instance, everyone was struck with really bad seasickness. John Locke, who plays Mercedes’ coach in the film, was vomiting over one side of the boat, then he turned to the other side, deliver his lines, then went back to vomit over the other side again, so that’s what we were up against on a daily basis, making the film, but that also [spoke to] the level of professionalism and perseverance that everyone on the film really embodied. We were so passionate about telling this story, everyone really grinned and bared it and got through. It was actually a wonderful experience, for the most part. When in the film, it’s choppy or it’s grey, those days were hard, but on the sunny days, it was incredible to be out there. It was such a beautiful place to be filming.
You shot over three years, which is quite a commitment by everybody. What was it like to plan for?
Yeah, that was a product of the time in which we made because COVID struck bang in the middle of production, and without that, it would have been very difficult to have kept everybody together and in one place and on board for the whole three years. But as it happened, COVID hit and the actors weren’t getting booked on other films and the crew was still around, so it made it a lot easier to keep everybody together. It was almost like being in the Coast Guard, [where] the bell dings and you’ve got to run for your boat because we were really at the mercy of the weather. If the wind changed or something ever came unsafe, we had to abandon the shoot before we even got out there, so we had to be able to call on these people.
That time must’ve helped logistically, but creatively does the film take new directions when you operate that way?
With the sea stuff, especially, it was almost like documentary filmmaking out there. I was reacting with the camera to what was just happening naturally on set. Kirsten Callaghan, who plays Mercedes, often spoke about how it went beyond acting. It was as real and as immersive for the actors as you could possibly make it. They were there in the English Channel, in a boat from the period, in costumes from the period. Everything was just as it would have been and I think there was a lot of space for them to improvise and use those surroundings in their performance. I just had to be very light on my feet and very nimble and try and capture all these moments while we were out there.
What was it like to work with Kirsten on this?
Kirsten was fantastic. We couldn’t have made the film with anyone else. She really brought all those traits that made Mercedes – the perseverance, the resilience, the determination, the grit that the character needed. We put out an open call for actresses, and we’d seen quite a few people, but no one really quite fit the bill of what we were looking for. Then Kirsten came in, and it looked as though Mercedes Gleitze had walked through the door. They look almost identical, and [Kirsten had] done her hair in a 1920s style and put these earrings in, so she just looked perfect for the role. And then we found out she was a great actress and she was adamant that she was going to do all of the swimming without a body double. When we heard that, that’s really what sealed the deal for us. We wanted it to be as authentic as possible, so for Kirsten to do the whole thing, not a single body double, three years of filming, that kind of dedication that she instantly wanted to bring to the project was what we were looking for.
I can’t imagine you could’ve taken much of a crew out with you. Was it difficult to pull this off?
Yeah, it was a tiny team, just a handful of people that we went out there with. That’s indie filmmaking, but also filming out at sea. You can’t have hordes of people hanging around out there because it’s just too difficult logistically to get them all out there.
Is it true you actually had to build the sound later when a boom operator might’ve been too much to ask for?
Yeah, we couldn’t record anything out there just because of the boat engines and that was very interesting because I’ve never had any experience really with ADR or sound design to that level before, so we had to come back after we’d shot everything and bring all the actors back, and they had to recreate their whole performance, basically from the bottom up. It was a mammoth task of them recreating the sound and it took about a year to get all the post-production completed on the film. We had to fly out to Germany for part of that as well because that’s the only place, I think, outside of Los Angeles where there’s an ADR water facility. They just don’t seem to exist. We had to put Kirsten in this water tank, and there was a screen as ADR works, and she was watching her performance and then dubbing the lines as it went on, but submerged in a pool. That in itself was one of those surreal parts of making this film and another cool experience. It was nice to have that German connection, given Mercedes and her German heritage.
What was it like to recreate this period on land?
Yeah, that was tricky too. Period stuff is difficult, especially on a really small, independent movie with a very tight budget. So we looked at creative ways of overcoming the challenges of bringing 1926 to life. For instance, with the vintage vehicles you see going up and down the streets, we rang up these vintage car clubs and because, again, it was COVID at the time, they weren’t doing any of the shows or fairs, having their cars displayed. So we said, “We’re making this film. We don’t really have any money, but we really need some vintage cars in it. Would you like to come along? We’ll pay your gas and get you lunch,” and I’d say nine times out of ten, they said, “Oh, don’t worry about the gas. Don’t worry about the lunch. We just want to be a part of it.” That was the spirit that everyone really brought to the film and how we achieved the period [look] through this community, collaborative spirit.
You got a vintage tanker in the mix on the water. How did that come about?
That was surreal. We’d wanted that scene, and it was in the script, but we left it almost on the cutting room floor before we’d even shot it because we just thought it was going to be impossible to find a steamer of that era that could come by and nearly mow Mercedes Gleitze down. But it just so happened we were out there filming one day and then on the horizon, we saw this steamship approaching. It was like the mirage scene in “Lawrence of Arabia.” It was just totally bizarre. And it was a split-second decision to follow it in the boat and got all the shots of it. It made it into the film, but it was just one of those serendipitous moments.
It seems like you could connect with Mercedes when you’ve got this hugely ambitious project that you couldn’t entirely know you’d be able to pull off. Could you connect to the story in that sense as you were approaching the finish line of this?
Yeah, on a much smaller scale, what Mercedes went through is very relatable from a filmmaking perspective. The constant knockbacks you’re receiving and this desire to just keep persevering and eventually getting to where you want to get. I think that relevance grew as the film went on. And this was a very underdog story, and even when we released, we ended up being up against Disney with “Young Woman and the Sea” and Netflix with “Nyad,” so it was interesting to come out with big establishment movies with this little indie competing alongside them. It mirrored a lot of what Mercedes went through, which was slightly strange.
But it’s been incredible. We released in the UK last year, and we expected maybe [a run of] one, two weeks in theaters, and we ended up having this huge 18-week run all across the UK and Ireland. We did a Q & A tour and it was just sold-out audience after sold-out audience, and having spent so long working on the film, and then to get to that point where people are coming in, and they’re seeing the movie, it was an incrediblething to have been a part of, and then to kind of share that with so many different people. Off the back of that success, we’ve got this great release coming up in North America, so I’m looking forward to that as well and how Americans react to the film.
“Vindication Swim” opens on October 17th in New York at the Quad Cinema and October 24th in Los Angeles at the Laemmle Royal.