BRITAIN'S youngest feature film director has been shooting scenes in Shoreham and Worthing for his upcoming movie, Vindication Swim.

Filming for 19-year-old Elliot Hasler’s latest feature film has been taking place at the Duke of Wellington pub in Shoreham and at Worthing Town Hall.

The action has required 80 extras, who have been taken from local sources including drama groups, Worthing Hospital, students and the Ramblers Association. Sequences at sea and on the coast have already been filmed in Brighton.

Elliot, who grew up in Brighton and is the UK’s youngest feature film director, has been hailed as the next Steven Spielberg. He produces and writes all his films independently, working from his family’s home in Hove.

Vindication Swim tells the story of Mercedes Gleitze, who grew up in Brighton and went on to become the first British woman to swim across the English Channel and the first to swim the Straits of Gibraltar.

She even had a Rolex watch named after her.

The independent film is being made on tight budget but has nonetheless attracted actors such as John Locke from 2019 Oscar-winning film The Favourite (who starred in Hasley’s previous short film, To Hunt A Tiger) and Giles New from the Pirates Of The Caribbean series.

Elliot has been making films since he was ten years old, but his feature film-making career began when he wrote, filmed, directed and starred in Charlie’s Letters, when he was 14.

The film debuted at Brighton and Edinburgh film festivals.

Finished when Hasler was 16, the film tells the true story of an escaped prisoner of war on the run in Italy.

It was inspired by Elliot’s great-grandfather.

Elliot wants Vindication Swim to be rooted in the Brighton community.

“We want it to be the next Quadrophenia because that’s associated with the city,” he said.

“We want something like this to have the same kind of impact, with people within the city helping out, coming on as extras and things like that.”

It took Mercedes Gleitze eight attempts to swim the English Channel and when she did finally succeed the validity of her achievement was brought into question by another woman’s false claim to have swum it faster a few days afterwards.

To clear things up, Gleitze set out on the vindication swim from which the film takes its title.

Elliot is intending to screen the film at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival.