Jed Hart is a writer and director whose debut film Restless is screening at Glasgow Film Festival in the Audience Award category. This excellent drama sees Nicky, played by Lyndsey Marshal, driven to the extremes of sleep depravation by nightmare new neighbour Deano, played by Aston McAuley. We chatted to Jed about making the film on a tight budget, the importance of the film’s musical choices, and the importance of getting to see the film with an audience.

Can you tell us a bit about the about the film?

Restless is a psychological thriller that’s about a mild mannered care worker who’s pulled into this escalating war of attrition with a nightmare neighbor who moves in next door.

And is this in any way based on lived experience?

Yeah. It’s definitely an idea that grew out of my own nightmare neighbor experiences, and trying to put my 3am murderous revenge fantasies to a more constructive use! The more I thought on the idea, and the more I moaned to other people about my situation, the more I realized what a universal problem it is. A lot of people will have experienced it in their life and I saw a bit of a gap there for a movie that explored it in a meaningful way. I mean, there’s a couple of comedy ones out there,but it’s a strangely un-milked scenario, I think.

How did you balance the drama with the humor? You could have easily lost the impact if you went overboard on the comedy. Were there quite a few drafts of the screenplay to get the right tone?

No, there wasn’t really. I think sometimes when you’re trying to do a rise in tension piece you always need these little moments where you can give the audience a break, a little breather so that you can allow the tension to build again. So it just felt interesting to have these kind of silly moments of humor that just dispersed the tension for a minute, and it makes it more impactful, I think, when that tension starts to rise again,

Especially when the some of the humor itself is adding to the tension. The first dream sequence is deliberately played as very funny, even though [Nicky’s] really starting to suffer.

Yeah, exactly, yeah. I mean, there are a few different sources. There’s [Barry Ward‘s potential love interest] Kevin who brings a kind of silly humor. But there’s also some darker humor in there, of just the absurdity of what’s going on at certain points in the movie, of how far she’s being pushed, and how ridiculous the guys from next door are.

But they all do the same thing. I think they they release that tension. They make it a more enjoyable ride as well. When I wrote the film we were just coming out of COVID, and a lot of pretty dark stuff before that. I wanted to do something that still was working in those channels, but was entertaining to watch as well, and not just a gruesome misery fest.

And how did Lyndsey and Aston get involved?

Lyndsey I’ve been aware of for quite a long time. She was in a film a while ago called Trespass Against Us that I saw was her and kind of she’s in there with [Michael] Fassbender and Brendan Gleeson and Sean Harris and the likes. And I just thought that she was every bit as good as them in that movie. So I had her in the back of my mind for quite some time as this underrated sort of gem really. Then when I came up with this idea, I thought she was perfect for it. She’s got this really nice balance of being quite vulnerable and petite, but she’s also got a fire in her belly when she needs it, she’s got that side to her.

And so we approached her, basically, and she said ‘No’, and then she made the mistake of emailing me a very nice ‘No’. And then once I had an email address, we kind of pursued her for another year, really, and then I think the timing was a bit better for her. We managed to convince her to do it, whereas Aston came from completely different route.

Aston came through the auditions process, sent in a tape, a really funny tape. He had this comedic take on it, which completely stood out from every other tape. When we brought him in for our audition. I wanted to see if he could also do the other side of it, if he could be convincingly dark, convincingly scary. And he just absolutely blew us away in the room in the audition.

He is pretty terrifying, but again, there’s a slight undercurrent of humor to him. You can find him funny and scary at the same time. It’s quite unnerving.

He doesn’t know he’s being evil, he thinks it’s all a laugh.

There was a line that stuck out to me, and I thought, ‘That’s not just a throw away’. It is the first time Nicky knocks on [Deano’s] door and he puts his own behavior down to his mental health. That feels like there’s a deeper point being made about weaponizing mental health issues to excuse bad behavior.

Yeah, I think that can be [looked at that way]. It also kind of nods to the fact that he’s slightly self reflective beside his continuous behavior.

Another part of the film that stands out is the musical choices. How much thought went into the [classical] music that Nicky listens to, and also the [EDM] music that’s on in the background in Deano’s flat? At one point they converge together, and it’s almost avant-garde when she’s going through the worst part of her sleep deprivation.

I always knew it would be kind of the backbone of the movie, really. The music is almost this extra character, with the basic idea being these two contrasting types of music that reflect these two completely different characters, and that end up kind of clashing and merging together. I always wanted to make something very, very subjective and very, very experiential, if you want. So you’re very much in that lead character’s point of view. And it just felt with this story, the way to put people in the room with her was always going to be down to the music and the sound design, and even the feel of the music coming through the walls and that realistic feeling.

You’ve made short films before, but how difficult is it to get a full length film made? You mentioned already, that it took a year before you could get Lyndsey on on board.

Because of the way we did this film, this is actually in film terms really, really quick. But me and my producer had been working together for something like eight years since we did our last short, I’ve had various different projects of various different budgets that have kind of all nearly gone or haven’t gone at all, just haven’t been able to get them over the line.

A few years ago, my producer came to me and said, can we come up with something on a really, really tight budget, contained but impactful. And we’ll just go and try and make it properly outside of the system for hardly any cash at and we’ll try and raise a bit as we go. So that’s what we did. I think that was probably April, 2022 when we had that plan. We were going to shoot then, but it ended up being kind of when COVID was still around. There were still those COVID rules to worry about and we backed out thinking if we get an outbreak, we just don’t have any money to cover anything. We’d have just wasted our time and money, so we delayed it one year. So literally, that was just over a year from writing the script, and then a year after that we’re in Tribeca, so for the industry that’s really, really, really quick. But we had to do something very, very low budget and outside of the system to be able to do that.

Were the two houses actually we see onscreen on location, as it were? The interiors weren’t sets?

No, it’s all on location and in those houses, mainly in Nikki’s house – we only venture a couple of times into the house next door – but yeah, when we go next door, that’s the real next door. The vast majority of it was shot there. And then we had a unit base just around the corner at a community centre. And we did kind of a day out by the seaside to get the seaside town angle. But the vast majority of it was in those two houses, which is actually how we were able to shoot it at the speed that we did.

How’s it been on the festival journey so far? You did Tribeca last year. Is this the second  festival or have there been other ones in between? 

There have been some little ones. But this is the next major one in Glasgow. It’s been exciting. It’s just exciting to see the movie with audiences. That’s how you dream of seeing it. It’s never anyone’s dream for it to go straight on Netflix or whatever. You want to be in a room with an enthusiastic crowd and get that direct feedback, I suppose.

What are your hopes for the films in terms of distribution and theatrical release? The, response to the film seems to have been very, very positive.

Yeah, people seem to like it! Again, I think it’s quite a universal theme that we’ve tapped into. I think people are in audiences are enjoying it. We’re lucky enough to be pushing for cinema release, at least in the UK. So that’s going to be coming out on April the Fourth, hopefully nationwide. We don’t know the exact number of screens yet, but yeah, so look out for it.

And have you got any other projects in the in the pipeline?

I always have projects in the pipeline! Who knows when they’re going to go and when they’re not? You know, it’s like trying to push a boulder uphill at times. But there are several things upcoming that we’re trying to get over the line.

And is there anyone specific you’d love to work with in the future?

Oh, God, there are loads. I’m not gonna say any huge ones. I’ll say a more semi-realistic one. I think Cosmo Jarvis is absolutely ridiculous, like an amazing actor. I’d love to do a project with him.

Restless screened as part of Glasgow Film Festival 2025