Lilit Lesser and Josefine Glæsel in a still from To Nowhere

What Is To Nowhere?

Welcome to the To Nowhere crowdfunding page. 

To Nowhere is a dark, queer coming-of-age feature film about two self-destructive teenage friends - Tulip and Finn - who embark on an alcohol-fuelled trip around a lonely corner of London. Spiralling out of control, they must confront unspoken trauma and love, or lose each other forever. 

While timid Tulip tries to express her burning love for Finn, Finn navigates her gender identity and lashes out at the world to cover up a secret that has destroyed her. As the day fades, their carefree fun-and-games evolve into a sadistic power play, and they start to lose control. As their relationship unravels, long-hidden truths start to emerge from the depths. When the girls find two fetish masks, their false facades are torn apart, and they are forced to confront what's beneath. 

With an intimate realism that takes us deep into the emotional journey of two adolescents on the edge, To Nowhere explore vital questions of gender identity, sexuality and trauma. As their journey reaches it's climax, this evolves into a dreamlike finale, with a hint of the surreal.

Lilit Lesser in a still from To Nowhere

Thanks to a sensational team effort, To Nowhere has been shot, edited and completed a successful festival run, where we won ten different awards! Now we need to prepare the film for distribution, so we need your help to raise an extra £2,500.

Lilit Lesser in a still from To Nowhere

Why Support To Nowhere?

Searching for meaning in their meaningless microcosm, Tulip and Finn wander through their day consumed by their aimless, endless quest for distraction. Despite their laughter, the girls are uneasy: something dark is lingering in their peripheries, stalking their every move. Come the night, the truth will out. They will see each other for who they really are. Brutal or gentle, spiteful or kind. Finn and Tulip's voices are at the very core of the film's identity. To Nowhere explores the complex and often confusing reality of two queer outsider adolescents struggling to understand their sexuality, gender identity, and the emotional weight of loss and trauma.

To Nowhere is a female lead project with a female writer/director, female producer and focuses on a story about two complex queer characters. A donation to this film would help support a unique, truly independent film. It will also be supporting underrepresented female and queer stories. As a totally independent, low-budget film, it's tricky to approach distributors and sales agents unsolicited. Any support you can offer will help us present the film in the best possible way, and give us an extra shot at bringing the film to a wider audience.

Sam Larner in a still from To Nowhere

The Story Behind To Nowhere

Sian rewrote and rewrote the script until it was ready (until weeks before shooting). She wrote (probably) thousands of emails, she interviewed; gathered a group of passionate, talented individuals. She walked around her area day and night with a camera, taking pictures for possible locations. She walked into shops, cafes and pubs and begged them to let her shoot there. She gathered all her clothes and objects and put them in big piles for different characters and spaces. She sat with DOP Mads Junker and went through every line of the script together. She had twenty people crammed into her flat for two weeks, she slept in the set. Then came Post-Production...after a year and a half of editing (part-time) we drafted and re-drafted sound design, colour grading, recorded ADR - all during a global pandemic with resources stretched thin. We raised money, campaigned, mixed and finally in November 2020, To Nowhere was complete. 

We went on to have a successful festival run, picking up the following awards along the way:

Best Director at Brighton Rocks Film Festival

Best Feature Film at British Independent Film Festival

Best Feature Film at London Rocks Film Festival

Best No-Budget Feature Film at Paris Independent Film Festival

Best Cinematography at London Rocks Film Festival

Best Performer (x2) at London Rocks Film Festival

Best LGBTQ+ Film at New Renaissance Film Festival

Best Debut Feature Film at Sweden Film Awards

Best Supporting Actor at British Independent Film Festival

Now we are at the next crucial stage - distribution.

Josefine Glæsel in a still from To Nowhere

An infinite amount of hard work and passion has gone into this project; every element of the film has been crafted with love and thought by people who care very much about the film's characters and story. Now, we need you to help us get the film out there! By donating (literally any amount that you can!) you can help us finish To Nowhere. To show our sincere gratitude for every donation, we have some excellent rewards to offer you in return, whether you are a filmmaker or film enthusiast. We want to offer you exclusive viewings of To Nowhere and other film experiences such as: 

- Personal letters from the director and printed stills from the film.

- A set visit to our next film (currently in development).

- For our highest donation of £500 you will receive an Executive Producer credit on our IMDB page. 

Where Will The Money Go?

After our fruitful festival run we are now at the stage of some final re-edits to make the film marketable. We need to raise funds for these final changes before we take the film to the next stage - finding a sales agent and distribution. We have a brilliant post-production team who have been working hard behind the scenes.

The extra £2,500 will be split as follows: 

- Re-edit : We are cutting down our runtime slightly

- Sound Edit: Once the re-edit is complete we need to do a few days work to correct any changes to the sound and smooth over any cuts. 

- Trailer - We are creating a trailer to send to potential sales agents and distributors as well as showcase the film online. 

- Sound Mix - We need a day in the sound studio to re-mix any changes.

- Marketing - This money will help build our online presence and potentially enable us to attend film markets to sell the film. 

Jane Wood in a still from To Nowhere

Who Made To Nowhere?

Photos by Top Tarasin

Cast

Tulip: Lilit Lesser

Lilit Lesser is an actor, writer, cabaret artist and translator. Television includes work for the BBC (Wolf Hall), Netflix (The Alienist, The Queens Gambit), ITV (Endeavour), Channel 4 (Spectacle) and Amazon (The Frankenstein Chronicles). They play the lead in several upcoming feature films including En Passant (PY Films). Radio includes The Bloody Chamber for BBC Radio 4. Recent theatre includes LILIT (writer/performer) at Barbican/Tramshed and Trigger Warning at Young Vic/Shoreditch Town Hall. Their translations have been published in Jeune Afrique, Mother Tongues and for Translators Without Borders. Training includes L'Ecole internationale de theatre Jacques Lecoq.

Finn: Josefine Glæsel

Josefine is a Danish actor known for her work in theatre, film and TV. Her credits include Danish horror film Prophets of Ignorance (2016), her role as Emma in Roser er gule (2019) and Anna in TV series Friheden ll (2020) as well as a variety of theatre credits including Maelkeboettereglementet (2019) and Aftenlandet (2020). Josefine studied at Skuespillerskolen Ophelia (Acting School Ophelia).

Stanley: Orlando Seale

After studying English and French at Oxford University, Orlando attended the Conservatoire National Superieur D'Art Dramatique in Paris and the Ecole Philipe Gaulier. Orlando's varied career has taken him from the Royal Shakespeare Company and the West End to roles in film and TV. These include Death On The Nile, Hamlet, Pride and Prejudice, Sleepy Hollow, Monday, Bobby, Hysteria, Jacques et la mecanique du coeur, Reign, HBO's Doll and Em, BBC's Motherland, The IT Crowd, Count Arthur Strong, The West Wing and others. Orlando is also a songwriter and artist.

Crew

Writer/Director: Sian Astor-Lewis

Sian is a writer-director from London, active since 2010. She directed several short films and also had success with her writing. Her radio play ‘Telephone’ won the Roundhouse Radio Competition in 2014 and was subsequently broadcast. In 2017, her recent short film, ‘Shake It Off’, was nominated for Best Female Filmmaker and Best Social Realism Film in the New Renaissance Film Festival. It was also an Official Selection in the London Independent Film Festival and Women on Screen. Her screenplay for ‘Masks’ was nominated for Best Screenplay at New Renaissance in 2017. This would later become her debut feature film. She is currently developing her next feature project, continuing to explore self-destructive characters navigating love and sexuality.

Producer: Georgia Hurt

After graduation from London College of Communication in 2013, Georgia has worked across TV, online content and short films. She has worked with brands and charities including the BBC, BT, Land Rover, Make A Wish UK, The International Olympic Committee, The Holocaust Education Trust and The Daily Mail. To Nowhere was her first feature project and she is currently in development with Sian on their next feature. In her spare time she is one half of comedy duo Hurt and Anderson (Musical Comedy Awards and Sketch Off FInalists 2017) and has taken five shows up to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival as well as the Leicester Comedy Festival. 

Casting Director: Heather Basten

Heather Basten is an English casting director based in London. She found her break into the industry at the BFI nearly a decade ago. She then moved into casting for film and TV, where she has since cast for notable directors such as Rob Savage, Ana Rocha De Sousa, Charlotte Regan and Giles Ripley. She is a member of the Casting Directors Guild (UK), and the Casting Society of America (USA). Past production companies and networks casted for include FOX TV, Film London, BFI Network, BBC Films, Sky Arts, DMC Films and more. As an associate her credits include Netflix's The End of the F**king World, Robert Egger's The Lighthouse starring Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson, and TV series Gomorrah. 

Photo by Top Tarasin

First Assistant Director: Top Tarasin

Puvani "Top" Tarasin is a first assistant director/film director from Bangkok, Thaliand. He graduated with a BA in Fine Arts majoring in Film from the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand. In 2006, Top began working at production company Phoscine (Thailand), directing over 100 commercials there. He briefly worked as a creative group head and film director for online ad agency Ad Hoc CO. Ltd. Top relocated to London in 2017 to pursue his passion for dramatic narrative. In 2018, he was 1st AD on the award winning feature British Made (Godiva Films) - a crime drama about a reformed white supremacist, Your Eyes On Me (Da Art Films) - an intense drama about drag culture, and To Nowhere (Grapevine Films) directed by Sian Astor-Lewis. In 2019, Top was 1st AD on The Complex, an interactive science fiction feature, directed by Paul Raschid (Little Jade Productions). He recently assisted on a feature in Bangkok, Thailand, The Bangkok Job (Monrey Films) and The Surgeon (Becky Sharpe Films). He also assisted on a dozen short films in that time. Top is also an award-winning film director with his shorts As It Comes and Your Reality.

Cinematographer: Mads Junker

Mads is a Danish freelance cinematographer who has worked in the Danish advertising and film industry since 2010. In 2015 he moved to London and started working on music promos, commercials and several award winning shorts. He is known for the successful short films A Girl Goes For Dinner and Cabron. His films were included in the Official Selection for Short Of The Month, Nice International Film Festival and the European Film Festival Moscow. He's a technically capable DP who worked his way up through the film camera department. He always searching for the surreal through a minimalistic and naturalistic approach. Inspiration comes from David Lynch, Paolo Sorrentino, Chan-Wook Park and Lars Von Trier. Mads is represented by Undercranked. 

Production Designer: Carolina De Lemos

Carolina is a young production designer who has worked on a variety of projects, ranging from commercials and music videos to fiction. Her main inspirations are a mix of her sunny mediterranean routes and her bustling London life. She has a passion for real storytelling and generating authentic spaces to house each particular narrative while still maintaining a bold visual style. The opportunity to curate spaces for such unique characters is what drew her to To Nowhere. The eccentric nature of the plot allowed for interesting dialogue between normality and the bizarre: the relationship between the character's pubic and private lives. Her films have screened at London Short Film Festival, London Independent Film Festival, Underwire Film Festival, Pictoclick Women In Film Showcase, and have received the Iris Prize nomination for Best British Short. 

Post-Production Team

Editor: Arttu Salmi

An alumni of the NFTS, his work spans across many genres and styles, both in fiction and documentary, and has screened at Sundance, Berlinale, Telluride, Hot Docs, Tribeca, Anima Mundi, AFI Fest, BFI London, Bristol Encounters, and Sheffield DOC/FEST, and broadcast by the BBC, Sky Arts, Al Jazeera and YLE Finland. Some of his recent credits include: feature thriller Containment (2015, dir. Neil Mcenery-West), short film I Do (2016, dir. Natasha Khan), as part of the omnibus feature Madly produced by Cowboy Films and MTV and series of shorts The Break (2016, dir. Zam Salim) for BBC Drama. 

Colourist and Online Editor: Alex Grigoras

Alex is a colourist and award-winning cinematographer. He is a visiting colour grading lecturer at various universities including LFS. His background in fine art and still image processing made for a good base for focusing on the post production side of image making. With 6 years experience he has colour graded 10 feature films and numerous shorts, commercials and music videos. 

Sound Department

To Nowhere's post-production sound department consists of 5 BAFTA Nominated Sound Designers. The team has worked on several Netflix and Amazon Prime productions, along with several award-winning films. The team is made up of Ruth Knight (Dialogue Editor), Yin Lee (Dialogue Editor), Harry JN Parsons (Sound Editor), Ed Rousseau (Re-recording Mixer), and Ruanth Chrisley Thyssen (Supervising Sound Editor). As well as sound designers Ania Przygoda (Make Up) and Anna Sulley (DAU).

Josefine Glæsel in a still from To Nowhere

Thank You From The To Nowhere Team!

Thank you for your love and support! We hope you want to see Tulip and Finn’s out in the world as much as we do! We can’t wait to share To Nowhere with you, our audience. So, please, donate any amount you can, as every donation makes a world of difference and will be sincerely appreciated. Follow us on social media for film updates and help us spread the word by sharing our campaign:

INSTAGRAM: @tonowherefilm - https://www.instagram.com/tonowherefilm/

FACEBOOK: @ToNowhereFilm - https://www.facebook.com/ToNowhereFilm

TWITTER: @To_Nowhere_Film - https://twitter.com/To_Nowhere_Film

We are so proud to have all of you supporting this unique and truly indie film, and hope soon to share the untold story of Tulip and Finn with you. Thank you for everything! 

Love, the To Nowhere team xxx