Last Swim takes A‑level results day to the big screen

A‑level results day is a tinderbox of emotions. The combined feeling of hope, anticipation and dread, all knotting in your stomach as you queue to find out your grades. The anxious smiles shared with mates as you reassure each other that everything will be fine, even though you ran out of time in that history exam. The unnerving sense that, as you hold a brown envelope containing the keys to your future, your life is about to change irrevocably.

It’s a day of bittersweet endings and new beginnings. A door closed on your teenage years, another swung open to the exhilarating freedom of adulthood.

Ripe for dramatic interpretation, then. Results day perfectly distils the core themes of any good coming-of-age film, rolling the optimism of youth and the uncertainty of growing up into one neat package. It’s part of the reason new British indie Last Swim makes for such an arresting watch. Set over 24 hours in London, the film follows a group of friends as they embark on post-A-evel results celebrations, traversing the city with a single mission: have the Best Day Ever.

​“I knew for a long time that I wanted my debut film to be a coming of age story about young people, and I wanted it to be set in London,” says director Sasha Nathwani. A born-and-raised Londoner himself, Sasha always felt there was something missing in on-screen depictions of the capital. The films and TV shows of his youth always focused on the grey skies, rain and relentless hustle of city life. It’s not exactly inaccurate, but it’s certainly not the full picture.

“In the summer that [version of London] completely flips on its head,” says the director, who prior to Last Swim had worked on an impressive selection of short films. ​“Strangers drum up conversations with one another. People are out in the streets. We know that the weather could change at any moment. So if the sun shines, you want to be with your friends, out there in the parks. You hear music blaring out of car stereos, from barbecues and from flat parties. I wanted to tap into that and tell a story about young people growing up in London, having to deal with a world that has become quite fraught.”

Enter Ziba, Last Swim​’s Iranian-British protagonist, played by Deba Hekmat. She’s the driving force behind the friendship group’s big day out in the city – she even designs and prints out itineraries for the group, which takes them everywhere from Notting Hill to eat falafel to Hampstead Heath for a dip in the ponds. Ziba is, by far and away, the smartest of the bunch, having just bagged herself a spot at University College London to study astrophysics. It’s a lifelong dream, one achieved through years of dedication, and despite attempts from a snide (and racially biassed) uni tutor to catch her out during her admissions interview.

All things considered, this day should be one of the happiest of Ziba’s life. When she opens that brown envelope to reveal two A*s and two As, guaranteeing her place on the course, you expect her to be over the moon. Instead, she slinks off to silently cry in the toilets.

This is because, for the past few months, the 16-year-old has been privately battling health issues that could jeopardise her future. Her determination to have the ultimate results day blowout with her mates, then, isn’t only driven by the classic teenage impulse to live large at any opportunity. It is – in Ziba’s mind, at least – her last chance to have any kind of fun.

So, Ziba is a complex character, straddling a range of emotions all at once, as she attempts to conceal her existential melancholy from her friends. A tough job for any actor, let alone a relatively new talent whose only just begun dipping their toes into the film industry. Such is the case with Deba, who you might recognise from her modelling and presenting jobs, or the pages of THE FACE. Last Swim is the 23-year-old’s second feature-length acting gig, following a part in Luna Carmoon’s Hoard, and her very first lead role.

How did Deba tackle such a challenging character? Well, it helped that Sasha had curated playlists for every character and scene, playing specific songs to each actor to get them in the zone before filming. But Deba also credits her fellow castmates for lifting the mood and making life on-set feel like she was genuinely just hanging out with friends. This much is clear when she Zooms from the London flat of her co-star Lydia Fleming (who plays Ziba’s best friend Tara), the pair cosied up on the sofa with cups of tea.

“I’ll be real, the acting world is a bit scary for me,” says Deba. ​“But I feel like the projects that I’ve done-slash-am-going-to-do are always going to be ones that feel like home and feel like family.”

Deba and Lydia begin reeling off anecdotes: the time the cast went to Nando’s after the first table read and felt an ​“instant” connection, or when they kicked off a week of rehearsals with an impromptu dance party to ​“Noughties bangers”. That sparkling, authentic chemistry between the cast is part of what makes Last Swim so special. You’re not only watching actors pretend to be mates. You’re feeling the energy of the cast’s real-life friendships, all of which were formed while filming.

Also part of this true-to-life gang of mates: Denzel Baidoo (Suspicion), who plays hopeful footballer Malcolm; Solly McLoed (House of Dragon, Outlander), who takes on party-chaser Shea; and Jay Lycurgo, whose character Merf provides unshakeable good vibes to the group. For Jay, who arrived on the Last Swim set after working on supercharged fantasy productions such as The Batman, Titans and The Bastard Son & the Devil Himself, the atmosphere was a breath of fresh air.

“Last Swim got me grounded again, back to real life,” he says of a production that shot in 2023. ​“It was a beautiful summer in London and we all just all wanted to hang out. We all had the same interests and we were making our own inside jokes. I guess the reason the chemistry worked so well is because we had that freedom, and we didn’t have a wall up – there were no egos.”

It’s a sentiment that’s echoed by Lydia (Mary & George, Call the Midwife), who was initially drawn to the script precisely because of its depiction of teenage friendship. She remembers watching the film back for the first time and feeling compelled to text Sasha the next day.

“[I said]: ​‘Do you know what you’ve captured? It’s that feeling of when you’ve shaken up a Coke bottle and you’re twisting the top off.’ They just break free. It’s that freedom, that feeling of, like, driving around with your best mates being daft. Maybe a lot of it [came from] how we bounced off each other and were improving, but it was also in the script from the beginning.”

Sasha first began writing Last Swim during the pandemic in 2020. Having previously worked on music videos, fashion films and commercials, lockdown was the first time he’d actually had the time and space to flesh out a full feature-length film. At the time, he loosely had Deba in mind for the lead role, but knew the character would be a lot of pressure for a young actor, especially given Ziba’s emotional journey.

“I needed to gauge whether she was up for it and whether she was going to be open and allow herself to be vulnerable,” he says. The director decided to do an open casting and Deba made it to the final callback. ​“She came in, did a read of the diagnosis scene and knocked it out the park. She was so incredible and able to communicate so much with just her eyes. That’s a skill that is impossible to teach – that kind of instinctual, emotional reaction.”

It also helped that Deba was born in Iranian Kurdistan, in the northwest of Iran, having moved to the UK as a child. The character of Ziba is largely informed by Sasha’s own Iranian-Indian heritage, inspired by his female cousins in Iran, who were all ​“academically strong, could speak one, if not two, languages, play a musical instrument and would help out at home,” he says.

“I just thought [about taking] this Iranian character and, instead of her being in Tehran, you put her in London, in a society where she can do whatever she wants to do. Then, for reasons outside of her control, she has to give up on her dreams and ambitions. There’s a real tragedy in the fact that she’s a young Iranian woman in London versus being a young Iranian boy, and I wanted to reflect on that.”

Sasha is keen to point out that Iranian-Kurdish people have their own culture and speak a different language. But that fundamental connection – of transposing a young girl from the Middle East into British society – helped Deba build the character, even if she didn’t want it to be the plot’s main focus.

“The second that you put ethnicity into films, especially British films, it becomes almost the only thing that’s focused on,” the actor says. ​“I never wanted Last Swim to be a film about a young Iranian girl. She’s born and bred in the UK, her character is very much British. And I resonate with her a lot, because that’s me. It took a long time for me to battle with myself [to stop thinking that] I’m not British. But everything I do – the way I speak, the way I act – my environment that made me like this, and that is the UK.

“I’m so proud that [Ziba is] Iranian and that there’s glimpses of her life in the film, like when she’s speaking to her mum in Farsi, or the ​‘Women, Life, Freedom’ posters in her room [that reflect the women’s rights movement in Kurdistan and Iran],” she continues. ​“All that stuff is powerful, there’s a message there, but we don’t make it about that.”

Because what Last Swim is really about is the beauty and pain of growing up, and the friendships that pull you through the rough. There are nuanced and difficult themes weaved throughout the plot, sure. But at its essence, the film is an ode to the power of youth, whether you’re dreaming of becoming an astrophysicist or simply diving into Hampstead Heath’s ponds with your mates. It’s about hope, in all its forms, and finding light, joy and optimism, even when it feels like the world is ending.

“As a young person, it can all feel very heavy,” concludes Sasha. ​“But as Ziba’s mum [tells her] nothing is permanent. However you feel right now, it won’t last forever. Whatever state you’re in – good or bad, high or low – just know that things are going to change.”

Last Swim screens at LFF on 14^th and 16^th October