[Editorial] Mayhem Festival: Interview with Thomas Sainsbury on Loop Track (2023)

Loop Track, Thomas Sainsbury’s directorial debut, has such a sparse description that it’s really difficult to know what you’re stepping into when it starts. It’s about Ian (played by the director), who is taking a trek through the New Zealand bush; and it’s pretty clear that he doesn’t quite know what he’s getting into either: he’s a novice hiker expecting to find the peace that he needs, but instead bumps into fellow hikers, and starts to wonder what else is out there.

I shan’t tell you any more about it, but encourage you to find out for yourself. I enjoyed Loop Track a great deal, and so it was an utter pleasure to spend half an hour talking to Thomas---“Let’s go with Tom,”---a few mornings ago; though I wasn’t sure whether to say “good evening,” to him, on the other side of the world. I confessed I had only read about Tom’s career in preparation for this interview; until now, it had been made up of theatre, television, film shorts, acting in other people’s films and now directing his own feature. As an opening question, I asked where the story originated; was it the characters, the beautiful location, or something else?

“The first thing was a concept,” he said, “the idea of someone being quite a distance from you and being unable to tell their intent. I had this experience here in New Zealand once; I was on some sand dunes and in the far distance there was a guy looking at me. It turned out he was looking at me and then looking for his dog, then went for a walk with his dog. But when he turned to me, I had an image of someone far away and unable to read his facial expression, which I had found quite chilling. That was the beginning of it. Also, I thought about what the character found in the forest: he went there for quiet and solitude, but he’s so alone that all he has are his own thoughts: I kind of like that paradigm as well.”

As well as Tom (who wrote the story, as well as acting and directing), I also wanted to credit the cinematographer, Milon Tesiram; his work was absolutely sublime, and I asked whether it did the location justice. “I think it makes it look even better,” Tom said; “that and colour as well. We filmed it during a drought, so it was a lot drier unfortunately. It was good for filming, because we didn’t get rained out (which could have been a problem), but the colour made it look more lush than it was.”

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The Loop Track of the title is a real woodland trail, and I was interested to hear a little more about that setting and any logistical issues it raised. “It is,” said Tom, “but every time we were filming, it was very close to a building; obviously we needed power and things like that, so when we went ‘deep’ in the forest, if you turned the camera just twenty-five degrees or so, you’d see a building. The farthest we had to walk away from humanity would have been about fifteen minutes, so it was pretty close.”

And what about the tourist board? I wondered whether they would have raised any obstacles. “They’ve been pretty supportive, though it obviously doesn’t paint New Zealand in the best light,” Tom said. “New Zealand is also very proud of its bird life, so we invited along the Forest & Bird organisation; they’re all about promoting conservation, and they said they loved it, which I took as a good sign.”

Tom’s character, Ian, is beautifully drawn and clearly going through something that had brought on somewhat shaky mental health, though we never get to find out what in the film. I asked Tom whether he has a back story sketched out. “Interestingly enough, no, I don’t,” Tom said, “which is a terrible thing for a storyteller to admit. It was kind of not very important to me: I didn’t want people to be wanting to know much about what came before the story, so I deliberately made it quite ambiguous.”

I had actually appreciated that about the film’s opening: the viewer simply goes in and follows Ian, watching and taking his journey with him. A film without requirement for any exposition is not commonplace in my experience.

About halfway through Loop Track, I realised where I’d seen Tom’s face before: Hayden Weal plays Nicky, the first person Ian crosses paths with in the forest and promptly disturbs Ian’s peace, and it was his voice that brought the recollection back to me. I reviewed Dead a couple of years ago, which Tom Sainsbury and Hayden Weal cowrote together (and Weal directed). Something told me he can’t be as annoying in real life as his character, or they wouldn’t have worked together again!

“He just embraced it so well,” said Tom, “and I didn’t need to give him much direction. He just knew what was expected, but in real life, he does know when to be quiet. I wrote that role initially for a friend of mine, but there was a scheduling conflict at the very last minute, and we had to think about a good replacement. Of course, Hayden was such a natural fit and I just love his performance in it and I love acting with him. We’re working on some other concepts together and a lifetime of working with Hayden would make me very happy.”

So far, from what I’ve seen, it works! Loop Track is quite different in tone to Dead, mind you; Dead was much more comedic, though I’ve seen Loop Track described as both black comedy and thriller. I asked Tom if it had proven quite hard to put a label to it. “It has turned out that way,” he nodded. “It’s quite interesting because we’ve had a few screenings here in New Zealand through a film festival, though it doesn’t have wide release for a couple more weeks… I didn’t think it was so funny until I sat in one of the screenings and all the audience was cracking up at the same parts. I guess it’s kind of like a slow boil, simmering for a long time, psychological drama; until the third act becomes kind of horror. But to explain that to someone is not easy.”

Explain it he must have done, because Loop Track’s UK premiere is now due to close Mayhem Film Festival on 15 October. I asked Tom what drew him to Mayhem. “It came from recommendations,” he said. “We’re being distributed by MPI, and we were unsure about any of it, but as soon as they signed on with us, I remember them saying how Mayhem have such a good way of doing their programmes. We read all about it and agreed it looked like a great fit.” Mayhem Film Festival is where I had seen After Midnight a few years ago, a film which Loop Track had reminded me of, with its humorous-yet-uncertain tone, plausible characters and satisfying surprises… definitely a good fit.

I couldn’t let Tom go without asking what he is working on next. “I work with the Chillbox team, who produced Loop Track,” Tom said. “We’ve been brainstorming some new ideas, and we’ve got a film in development with the New Zealand Film Commission, another one with a horror vibe. It’s based on one of the guys who is in America and moved to New Zealand: because a lot of my foreign friends comment on the New Zealand culture, in that we’re not great at expressing our feelings, talking about anything tricky… so it’s a horror-comedy of manners. All things going well, we’ll be going into production next year.”

Loop Track will be screening at Mayhem Film Festival on Sunday 15 October; individual tickets are available online, and full festival passes can be purchased by phoning the box office directly on 0115 952 6611.

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