‘The Long Spring’ Draws on Real-Life Refugee Stories (Exclusive Trailer)

British writer-director Olly Ginelli has released the trailer for his timely short film The Long Spring ahead of its fall festival appearances.

The 15-minute project is inspired by Ginelli’s time volunteering at the Dunkirk refugee camp in France, when he met and became close friends with a Kurdish man, Saady. Forced to flee the territorial control of ISIS with just the clothes on his back in 2015, upon his arrival in the U.K., Saady’s perilous journey inspired The Long Spring.

“There were a few things that I noticed when I was there that I was quite surprised at,” Ginelli tells The Hollywood Reporter about the story behind his new film. “Number one was the presence of organized crime in the camps — it’s hard to fathom the fact that people would take advantage of the most desperate people on the planet. They couldn’t be more desperate. They don’t even have a country, let alone a home.”

Saady’s experience led Ginelli to write a feature-length script — a project almost selected by the BBC Writersroom — but his urgency to tell the story soon culminated in The Long Spring, following the journey of brother-sister duo Arron and Kika, trapped in the back of a truck with dozens of refugees. As hours turn to days, food and water run out, and fear begins to take hold. When whispers spread that their smugglers may, in fact, be traffickers, Arron’s optimism starts to unravel.

Ginelli’s film highlights the gritty experience of refugees fleeing their homes, with the group forced to share basic toilet facilities and sleep nearly on top of one another. “It is really, really difficult,” recalls Saady, who was successfully granted asylum in the U.K. and now works as a barber in northern England. “People face lots of challenges, especially kids and women, pregnant women, there were lots of things [that were] unacceptable — things we can’t even say,” he adds. “Even if I tell you, you are not going to believe it.” The production also consulted U.K. modern slavery charity Justice and Care, as well as a local police chief outside of London — where part of the film was shot — to guarantee the utmost accuracy on The Long Spring.

It comes at a politically charged time for the U.K., when far-right politicians are garnering unprecedented support by wielding staunch anti-immigration views. “[I would hope] that anyone who watched this film who knows someone with a far-right opinion might be able to enter into a discussion in more of a tempered way,” begins Ginelli. “Because when it’s a real news story and real people have been hurt, real jobs have been lost — whatever the angle is, it’s so much more charged. When you’re watching something that is fiction, it’s a gentle way in.”

For Saady, however, watching The Long Spring conjures up a lot of emotion — even anger. “I couldn’t watch it very well,” he admitted. “It reminds me of a lot of things. It’s been nine, 10 years, but I still remember many things, exactly [as they are in] the film, and they could be 10 times [worse] than the film. But Olly has done a really good job…. It’s been [happening] for many years, and no one knows anything about it. Olly chose a really good [platform] to introduce this [issue] to everyone.”

The refugee crisis is one angle, says Ginelli, but he has even bigger plans for a four-part limited series he’s writing on the same topic. “Modern-day slavery is what the TV series will be about, because people don’t realize, but there are more slaves today than there ever was in recorded history, [by] a factor of five or 10 times,” says the young filmmaker.

Though The Long Spring was privately funded, one investor is keen to help out on Ginelli’s TV plans. It’s a subject he’s particularly passionate about. “The only thing I know is consistent with my work is I like to try and show people something that they haven’t seen before, and particularly worlds that they haven’t seen before,” he explains. “Being in the camps and witnessing the refugee crisis from the inside, hearing the stories about it on the inside, that’s a world that 90 percent of people you know haven’t heard of before. But it’s [also] one of the biggest issues of our current time — that contradiction is shocking and hard to understand.”

Filmed in and around London and featuring Aymen Hamdouchi (Black Mirror, War Machine, Green Zone), The Long Spring is set to kick off its festival journey, including at the Soho Indie Film Fest and TweetFest, in the coming weeks. It will be released globally in 2026.

Watch the trailer for The Long Spring below.