Directed by Dustin Curtis Murphy
Written by Kev Hopgood
Produced by Kev Hopgood & Marius Smuts
A dying old man summons a priest to his bedside. The old man seeks to undergo the rite of the last confession. He's abrupt and cynical, and he confesses to a litany of transgression, from being a cold father to cheating on his wife to being a guard at a Nazi concentration camp. But as the priest listens, the old man shares the one redeeming thing he's done with his life.
As a guard, he saved a young Jewish woman from the gas chambers, who managed somehow to stay alive despite the fatal gas. He hides the woman and keeps her alive, until one day she disappears mysteriously. But as he confesses, he reveals her fate -- as well as his reward for his act of goodness in his life.
ABOUT THE FILM
Screenwriter/producer Kev Hopgood brought a draft of THE LAST CONFESSION to a Kino writer’s group held spring 2019 where he met director Dustin Curtis Murphy. They joined forces and the film was shot summer/fall of 2019. Once released it was a Golden Stake Award Winner at Shockfest and Nominated for Best Short Film at Unrestricted View Horror Film Festival, both in 2021, before being released on Omeleto in summer of 2022. Omeleto hosted the film on their channel for 6 months, earning roughly 20,000 views, and the film is now hosted on our Kino Short Film YouTube channel.
ABOUT THE FILMMAKERs
Dustin (director) is no stranger to the Kino community. He is an award-winning writer, director, and producer creating work at the crossroads of social impact and commercial crowd-pleasers. His work focuses on character driven narratives with relevant social themes and tightly structured plots, often working in blended genre. Loves a good twist.
Dustin has produced 2 web-series, 1 feature film, and 9 short films that have been recognized by Academy Award, BAFTA, and BIFA qualifying film festivals.
Filmography highlights include:
COYOTE - a dystopian sci-fi starring Therica Wilson-Read (Netflix's The Witcher), Borislava Stratieva (Luther: The Fallen Sun), Ailish Symons, (The Widow) and BIFA Winner Ruhtxjiaïh Bèllènéa (The Last Tree).
SAMARITAN - Selected for the Climate Story Lab run by Exposure Labs, BFI Network and Doc Society. Winner: Best International Short at the Sedona International Film Festival and the Grand Prize at The Weather Channel's #EarthFilmChallenge; Semi-Finalist at the Academy Award Qualifying Flickers’ Rhode Island International Film Festival. Distributed via Omeleto.
Kev (screenwriter & producer) started his comics career in the mid-1980s, working as a penciller on the Marvel UK strip Zoids. Work for various titles followed, including Action Force, Doctor Who and 2000 AD, where he co-created the series Night Zero. He went on to a three year stint as penciller for Iron Man for Marvel in the US. During his tenure he co-created the character War Machine, who has spawned numerous spin-offs and made major appearances in the Iron Man movies. Past and current clients include Marvel Comics, Games Workshop, Oxford University Press, DC Thompson, BBC Worldwide, Macmillan, 2000 AD, Franklin Watts, Pearson, Barrington Stoke, Real Reads, Cambridge University Press, Eaglemoss, Usbourne and Badger Publishing.
Kev currently divides his time between working in comics, the wider world of children's illustration, and for pleasure he enjoys making short films.
READ OUR INTERVIEW WITH DUSTIN
Tell us a bit about yourself and your filmmaking background.
My name is Dustin and I’ve been making films since I was a kid in the backyard using my parents home video camera. My debut was a western with double-sided tape and paper mustaches, stick horses, and starring a 10 year old version of myself.
Being raised in California I was lucky enough to have video production taught at my Junior High and High School, and quickly became teachers pet, over delivering on film project homework. My dad bought me college level film curriculum that I studied long before it was time to put in college applications and I began touring festivals at the age of 14 with my student shorts which leaned heavily into one of my favourite influences - The Twilight Zone.
In my senior year I won Shriekfest in Hollywood with my short film Repossessed - about a serial killer that intentionally doesn’t pay his month car bills in order to lure repo men as his next victim, steals their identity, and repeat. The same year I optioned my first feature screenplay and entered the industry as a production assistant, so I decided to start getting real world work experience instead of going to a film school that would put me in debt for the rest of the my life and make me sit in a classroom for my first two years learning theory. I’m a big advocate for learning to make films by actually, well, making films!
I’ve also worked a lot in theatre and learned so much there about the creative process and working with actors, which if you’ve seen The Last Confession makes sense - it’s style and structure is very theatrical and I could easily see this scene being performed on stage.
While my first screenplay fell out of option un-produced I continued to write, direct, produce and edit my own short form content including a 50 episode web-series and several short films - my most successful being Samaritan (2020) which won the Weather Channel’s #EarthFilmChallenge and Best International Short at the Sedona Film Festival, among other festival successes, and eventually premiered on Omeleto - the largest YouTube channel for short film.
I’m currently a working director, producer, writer and editor living in London and daily doing the hustle.
Tell us about the Genesis of The Last Confession?
The script for The Last Confession first came to my attention at a Kino writer’s group at a pub in London. Kev pitched his idea and the following day I reached out to him via email to tell him that I was interested in directing if he’d have me. He said yes and we quickly wrangled preproduction shooting the film in late 2019.
What obstacles did you overcome while in the making of this film?
Typically, I also produce the short films that I direct. With The Last Confession is was nice to have Kev and Marius handle the logistics so I could focus on the creative.
From what I hear, the hardest part was wrangling the location for the gas chamber. You’d think a dank old basement would be easy to find in London, but many of those type of filming locations wanted a fortune. We were lucky enough to find a theatre in Kent that had a basement they were willing to let us film in on the cheap.
So the takeaway for any producers out there reading: Travel costs can sometimes be lower than paying for a location in your area (but maybe not anymore with the freaking gas prices).
Tell us about the journey of getting your film to audiences.
Okay, so I’ll be honest, this film totally tanked on the festival circuit. We played at two festivals - Unrestricted View Horror Film Festival in London (where we were nominated for Best Short Film) and Shockfest (which gave us a Golden Stake Award - sounds fancy, but hey give out about 90 of those awards every month). Anybody whose had their short on the festival circuit, and is willing to be honest about their experiences, will tell you that they receive more rejections than Official Selections. It can really wreck havoc on your mental health if you let it.
But… film festivals aren’t the only way to get your short film seen. Some filmmakers aren’t too keen about getting their work online. They’d rather be in a cinema at a festival because it’s always great to play to a live audience. But even the biggest festival audience typically gets less eyeballs on your film than the most modest online premier.
Perhaps you think a big successful festival run is needed to land distribution on a big online shorts platform, but that’s not always the case. It’s fine to skip the festival circuit altogether if you’d rather avoid a headache, and sometimes you’re just sitting on a brilliant film waiting for a year of rejection to pass by before getting it online - why not just release straight online if you can?!
In my case, relationships help. Omeleto had previously premiered my short film Samaritan. After that I’ve got them involved in Kino and, as a curator of short film myself for the Kino London Short Film Festival, I’ve sent other great shorts I’ve come across in Omeleto’s direction. When I approached them about The Last Confession, I was honest about its failings on the festival circuit and fully prepared for them to say “Thanks, but no thanks.” But to my surprise, they liked it and gave us our premier.
Words of wisdom. What advice would you give to other filmmakers?
I’ve seen too many aspiring filmmakers spin their wheels because they want their first film to be a masterpiece. It’s definitely the right idea to strive to make a film to the best of your ability, but no one is going to grow as an artist without practice. So… don’t be afraid to fail.
If you start writing and the script isn’t turning out the way you want it to, then don’t give up by shelving the script. Get some feedback from an experienced writer whose work you respect and a write a couple drafts. BUT… it’s also important to not end up in an endless feedback loop of rewrites. Incorporate the feedback that resonates with you and discard the feedback that doesn’t. Whatever you do, don’t chase your tail trying to please everyone by incorporating everyone’s contradictory notes. Know what your film is. Know what your film isn’t. And listen to the people who want to make your film the best version it can possible be. Don’t listen to people who want to highjack your vision and turn your project into something else. I personally think that every writer can get where they need to go in no more than 5 drafts. Iteration for a short film should take no longer than a couple of months.
Once your script is ready, get it into production any way that you can. Sure, aim for that DOP with a cinema camera and that producer who won a BAFTA, but when they ghost you (as happens with most cold call emails) then it’s time to get the film into production yourself. Shoot on a DSLR or iPhone if you have to. Just get the project made. Don’t wait for perfection. An imperfect, but completed, film is better than a perfect film that only lives in your head.
Once you’ve shot and edited the film, chances are you’re gonna be so over saturated with watching it that you’re not gonna be in a position to accurately assess how good/bad your finished project is. Like with your screenplay, get some feedback and just keep moving on to the next step which is: getting your film seen (by any means necessary).
You may be embarrassed to show your film because it didn’t turn out the way you’d hoped, or you may just want to get into production on another film because you’re not a natural marketer. BUT… the experience of watching your film with a live audience will help you grow as a filmmaker. Feeling the vibe of the room when screening your work helps you understand which aspects of your film work and don’t work.
AND… it’s not about chasing festival laurels. There are so many festivals out there that aren’t really festivals, but they’ve give you a .png file to make you feel good because the big boy festivals are brutal with machine-gun spraying rejection letters. A good middle ground is aiming for mid-tier festivals. Not only because your chances are higher in a smaller submission pool, but also because mid-tier festivals typically have a passionate team behind them who oftentimes are filmmakers themselves. I’ve found that curators who have filmmaking experience tend to truly care about curating the best quality films. Some of the bigger festivals receive an overwhelming amount of submissions and oftentimes their programers aren’t people with filmmaking experience so they tend to prioritise films with relevant social trends vs craft filmmaking. I know you want that Academy Award qualifying laurel on your poster, but honestly at the end of the day it doesn’t make that much of a difference. I’ve chatted with BAFTA nominated short filmmakers who you think would have found the keys to the pearly gates of feature filmmaking via their short form success, but the truth is no one is really knocking down doors to provide a plethora of opportunities for short filmmakers at the top of their game. You have to knock down your own doors.
And finally… let’s say that you get rejected from festivals. Screw ‘em. There’s other ways to get your film out there, like Kino’s Short Film Open Mic, sharing it online with friends and family in the hopes of getting in trending, sending it to short film blogs and websites, or even using your short film as a calling card when direct emailing potential future collaborators.
What are you working on now?
I’m currently in post-production on my debut feature film, COYOTE, a dystopian sci-fi about how newly developed teleportation technology affects the refugee crisis. It star Therica Wilson-Read (Netflix’s The Witcher), Borislava Stratieva (Absentia), Ailish Symons (The Widow), and BIFA winner Ruhtxjiaïh Bèllènéa (The Last Tree). We’re going to market with it this year and aiming for a top tier distributor to help us with a wide release in 2023.
Any film recommendations that we should add to our watchlist?
Some of my favourites I’ve watched lately:
THE WAVE (2020) a great indie feature starring Justin Long. Think FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS meets AFTER HOURS meets time travel.
tick, tick, BOOM! (2021) is simply one of the best films ever made about what it’s actually like to be a creative trying to get your big break.
THE EYES OF TAMMY FAYE (2021) was one of my favs from last years award season. Got way too much hate/indifference. Andrew Garfield should have won Best Supporting Actor for his performance, but he wasn’t even nominated. (Granted, he was nominated for Best Actor in a Leading Role for tick, tick, BOOM! and I still haven’t seen CODA which actually won Best Supporting Actor.)
Not a film, but current series that I think are worth the watch:
OUTER RANGE - Part western, part sci-fi. Great cast! Josh Brolin just as good as ever and Imogen Poots gives her best all time. Also great to see Lili Taylor again in a major release after all these years (“Joe lies.”)
SEVERANCE - Stylish sci-fi with Ben Stiller at the helm giving his career best (off-screen). John Turturro and Christopher Walken have a thing for each other!