Walk by Water

Nick Howden-Steenstra

I wrote Walk by Water as a response to a friend's script. Their script was told very deliberately from one perspective, and I couldn't get out of my head what the other character must have been experiencing. I wanted to make something that embraced fully the two-sidedness of a situation. The complexity, messiness and duality of a relationship, especially the ending of a relationship.

We shot it just before the pandemic hit. February 2020. Along a stretch of the River Thames near my home, inheriting the spectacular backdrop of Tower Bridge. The film encapsulates a moment in time, before my life and the world, changed. The films have been sitting with me unfinished through everything since.

The shock, when I was writing it, was the father's death. That wasn't the film I thought I was making. I thought I was writing about trying to find closure too late. Through the redraft it became clear why Robin had turned up at Jaz' door. It shocked me, and without it, there wouldn't have been a film. The death allowed them to go past the hurt, pain and betrayal they felt for one another, and reconnect, if only for a moment. But with that came the grief of knowing that the one person you want to hold you can't anymore.

We filmed it twice. Same script, same scenes, on the same stretch of river. The actors swapping roles between the two versions. Two reasons. First, a rebellion against the industry's habit of casting to type. Second, an experiment in projection: if the ex on the doorstep is a woman, does the audience read the scene one way? If it's a man, does it land differently?

Filming twice was a wonderful experience and produced two very different films. As a first time film-maker, it also compounded the difficulty of getting either of them finished. This is the first to cross the line. It's the version cast against type, and it's the creative team's favourite.

Henry Leroy-Salta

Henry Leroy-Salta is a writer-director from Epsom, Surrey, working across live action and animation with a recurring interest in nature, memory, and the strangeness underneath the everyday. His horror screenplay Tidbit, about newlyweds who suddenly cannot swallow food and turn on each other in their hunger, has won six festival laurels. Joseph Quinn and Sian Maxwell are attached to star.

His short Mulch (2024), co-directed with Alexander Tol, blends live action with animation by Hannah Anastasi and an original score by Italian horror composer Fabio Frizzi. It premiered at FrightFest UK: a man on a pilgrimage through an ancient forest encounters a shared memory and discovers his true nature.