When crafting his debut feature Masc, UK-based Swedish filmmaker Bertil Nilsson paid as much attention to what was happening off screen as on.
The low-budget, self-funded film, which Screen Star of Tomorrow 2026 Nilsson also produced through his company Duktiga, world premiered at Toronto and is now screening at the BFI London Film Festival, including a relaxed screening.
It follows Robin (played by Joshua Griffin), a young autistic man exploring different identities. Many of the key cast and crew – including Nilsson and Griffin – identify as neurodivergent, which helped shape the approach to production.
The film is divided into five chapters. Each shot for a few days at different points throughout the year from June 2024, for 40 days in total, at locations including Nilsson’s own home in London and Snowdonia in Wales.
Nilsson says there was a strict no-overtime rule, as the core crew of four stuck to eight-hour shoot days.
“We had a documentary mindset of working in a very small team, the absolute minimal amount of people, and spreading it [the shoot] out,” he explains. ”We really slowed the pace down, didn’t give ourselves too much to do in each day, a much more relaxed schedule than you would normally have on narrative film.”
Nilsson and Griffin met on Nilsson’s 2023 short film Repair. Masc grew from a desire to further explore the themes touched on in the short, including queer identity and neurodivergence, with development on the project beginning a year before the film shot.
Nilsson put pen to paper, with Griffin – who also stars in Stuffed – working alongside him on the story.
“People are not just one thing. You’re multiple different things, and there are lots of different expectations tied up around each one of those identities,” says Nilsson. “I’m quite interested in that kind of intersection.”
The filmmaker suspected the public funding route for his debut feature wouldn’t fit his DIY method. “I didn’t really see how that [funding] would be compatible with working in different ways. It felt like with that structure, there’s expectation. There’s a lot of money involved. It’s a long journey, lots of great films come out of that system. But we thought, what resources do we have? What can we do? Can we adopt a different model?”
As an actor, Griffin found the staggered five-part process helpful. “It gave me time, before each section we would film, to explore,” he says. “Before the care home part [in which Robin works in a care home], I was working in a care home to get a sense of it – and to earn some money.”
Industry improvements
Griffin would like to see the industry think more radically about how to transform production practices to increase accessibility.
”The biggest challenge is how we find ways of making films that are not as expensive, but don’t compromise the working conditions and the quality, ” he says.”That’s possible by not necessarily thinking,’This [traditional system] is how films are made, we need all of these different people doing all of these specialised roles,’.
“Accessibility needs are [often] a bit of an add-on. They don’t need to be – if you bring it in from the roots, it doesn’t feel like an addition.”
Griffin points to the film’s casting process, overseen by Hannah Ashby Ward at Lane Casting, as an example. “We had plenty of time with each actor, so we could really get into the scene or what they needed. It was their choice whether they wanted to tape or come in. It was flexible to each person.
“Maybe it’s hard to scale up [on bigger-budget productions], but having the mindset really helps.”
Barcelona and São Paulo-based MoreThan Films is repping sales on Masc.
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