Not Now, Never Now

We’re always longing for something we can’t have, we can’t bring the ones we’ve lost back, yet we search for something, some piece of them to hold on to.

We’re always longing for something, seeking some pie in the sky, a lofty goal or dream, always chasing, instead of being with ourselves, sitting in our pain or sitting in our discomfort or being grateful for all that we are and all we that we have.

"Not Now, Never Now" is about this. It’s about loss and longing, about a girl who more than anything misses her mother and yearns to be with her again, and about a father who more than anything wants to see his daughter whole again, we always want that which we cannot have, when what we need to make us whole is sometimes sitting right In front of us.

The idea for the film sprung on me in April 2018, while I was on a personal retreat in the countryside in central Trinidad.

I was reading an article by Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh where he said:
‘If you have a chance to go up there on the moon for a week, when you get back to Earth you'll find that Earth is the best place, the only place you want to be. Just looking at the grass and listening to the creek, you can be very happy."

As I sat looking over the rolling hills, at a view which eventually became a set in the film, contemplating this, the story of Esha and her father Nanda rushed to my mind almost immediately.

I needed to capture the essence of these words visually, something concise and emotional that would instantly resonate with an audience.

As a filmmaker, I had been longing and dreaming myself to shoot on 16mm film again, as I once had in film school, and this film presented a perfect opportunity for me to do this.

We live in a world now where people are in a constant search of perfection, clean and perfect, even sterile and lifeless images. I knew for this film I wanted the audience immersed with our characters in beautiful and perfectly imperfect nature, and 16mm was the only medium for me to achieve this, I was determined to shoot on it.

While watching this film, my hope is for the viewer to experience Nanda’s desire to help his daughter process her loss as he tries time and time again to connect with her, inadvertently only pushing her further away until the end, when she finally gets it.

For me, there is a bittersweet feeling by the end as well, because I feel on some level the film is also about chasing your dreams, and how we can all get caught up working so hard with laser focus on achieving some singular goal that we end up missing everything else that's important in our life, all the small things which are really the big things.

I was interested in juxtaposing the image of Esha looking up at the moon longing for her mother in the middle of the film, and then being on the desolate moon all alone at the end looking up at the earth longing for her father and for her home.

In a way this idea explains the title “Not Now, Never Now.” To me it's exploring the idea of being present and facing life in every moment rather than running away from the painful or uncomfortable, or chasing what you long for, because if not now, then when?

For this film I was inspired by the work of Satyajit Ray, especially his film "Pather Panchali", as well as Terrence Malick’s “The Thin Red Line”.
I loved the Apu trilogy for the way it portrayed life in rural India, and felt a deep connection to it as it reminded me of the country side in Trinidad, where I’m from. "The Thin Red Line" inspired me for the way that Malick contemplates and captures nature and man’s place within it.

We did have a few challenges getting this film made. Although in our crowdfunding we only raised one third of the intended budget, we still committed to making the film happen, so shooting took place over the course of 2019 in several small blocks when cast and crew were available.

Our first attempt at the moon landing sequence we shot in a quarry and got rained out after the first shot (which is in the film, the foot stepping off the spacecraft steps) but this was seemingly divine intervention as the space suit really needed a lot of work and was far from picture ready, and so we wrapped early that night and I had the opportunity to revisit and re-work the suit with the production design team over the course of that year, we finally shot the moon landing in a makeshift studio at the end of December 2019.

There were also some delays in post production because after shooting in the end of 2019 and picture editing in early 2020 the world was hit by the pandemic. I only had one VFX artist working with me, and he was giving me time in between his actual job and so over the course of the following three years we plugged away back and forth when we could to try and get the moon landing sequence completed.

Working with these actors and actresses was special because I wrote this film with Dinesh in mind, (I had worked with him when I was 1st AD on a feature film "Moko Jumbie" that he was in a few years prior), and I knew that I would love to work with him as an actor. So in many ways knowing this inspired me to write the character of Nanda.

I also incorporated the traditional art of bharatanatyam dancing into the climax of the story because I was friends with Alana (Adult Esha) who is a classically trained bharatanatyam dancer and I knew she would bring an amazing performance to the table, so when I told her my idea for the film and she agreed to do it I was overjoyed, I knew we would have something really cinematic on our hands.

I didn't know our young lead Priyanka before, and we went through a fairly thorough casting process before finding her, but she was just a gem, a joy to work with and a really promising young actress who really embodied the character of Esha.

Working with the crew for this film was amazing because they're some great friends of mine and I’ve worked with most of them many times before, we all have a great synergy and they’re some of the best Trinidad & Tobago has to offer.

Everyone was so generous with their time as most people worked pro bono to make the film come to life on the meagre budget we had.

I really wanted to spend as much money on screen as possible, and the crew understood that and fully supported it, so to all of them I’m grateful.

We were fortunate to get the equipment for this film because a local production company that I knew owned an Aaton XTR Prod 16mm film camera, and they agreed to rent it to us at a reduced rate for the film, it’s one of the only film cameras on the island, and shooting on film was of paramount importance to me, the whole look and feel of the film hinged on it in my mind.

We were also extremely lucky that Tim Stipan, a master colourist who graded films like Black Swan, Moonrise Kingdom, The Wrestler and Jojo Rabbit (just to name a few) agreed to colour grade this project for us!
He was super easy to work with, and is also an avid 16mm lover. I'm a really huge fan of all his work, so to have him on board this film was really a dream come true.

This film will always be special to me because it ended up being a project that lived with me through some of the biggest milestones of my life, and although it has gone on longer than I had intended, I’ve come to learn that everything happens in the time it’s meant to.

Warm regards,
Oliver Milne