Dhillon Shukla’s Money Up is a tender portrayal of love, friendship, and boyhood in the city
Under the grey of London’s winter sky, a group of school boys throw pound coins at a playground wall. The game is called Money Up, and the aim is to get your coin closest to the wall; if you win, you have to toss the coin – and correctly call it – to determine whether or not you pocket the lot.
For many, the game is the embodiment of mundanity: a school yard activity played to pass the time. But for writer and director Dhillon Shukla, it’s a sweet nostalgia that’s at the heart of his short film, Money Up – a tender portrayal of love, friendship, and boyhood in London.
The film follows 13-year-old Reece (portrayed by Alan Asaad) throughout his day, as he hustles to scrape together enough money to buy the girl of his dreams dinner on their after-school date. Viewers journey with the teenager as he charms his local shopkeeper, gets entrepreneurial at school, and – finally – gets his happy ending.
“I was trying to show a lighter side of the city and young multicultural Londoners,” Shukla says of the film’s aim. “When we see kids like these on film, we’re used to seeing them being caught up in stories that centre around drugs and violence. That happens, but it’s also authentic to have films that show the light as well as the dark, and I wanted to balance that out.”
It’s in the boys’ banal, everyday experiences that we see the resilience, spirit, and joy of coming of age in the city, and learning about life, love, and hard work.
Money Up is released as part of New Creatives, supported by Arts Council England and BBC Arts, and in collaboration with the ICA and Dazed. It follows Samuel Douek’s STONEWALL 2069 and Dubheasa Lanipekun’s Blue Corridor in the project. Cast portraits for Money Up were shot by photographer Gray Brame.
Below, Dhillon Shukla discusses how Money Up came to fruition, and reflects on how his own experience of growing up in London influenced the film.
What inspired Money Up?
Dhillon Shukla: It was really inspired by growing up in London and my time in secondary school. I’d been working on a longer script that’s set in the future and quite large in scale for a while, and wanted to do something small and contemporary. So in some ways it came as a reaction to that.
What was the process of commissioning and filming like? What difficulties did you face?
Dhillon Shukla: They were both really complicated and suffered lots of delays, which is to be expected when you make a film. The main challenge was matching the ambition of the project with the budget. I don’t think anyone believed we could pull it off. There was this running joke that we were trying to make the impossible happen, and I kept being gently reminded that at some point I was going to have to cut something or rewrite the script as we didn’t have enough money. In the end we didn’t have to, and I was really happy about that. We shot in three locations with seven actors. Five of them were street cast, had never acted before, and didn’t have a chance to rehearse – and we did it all in ten hours, which is really unusual.
You grew up in London yourself – to what extent is Reece’s experience of school, love, and life in the city inspired by your own?
Dhillon Shukla: A lot of it came from memories that you could only have if you grew up here, but I think it’s also quite universal. Things like playing Money Up and the characters are all really London. One of the kids in the film actually saw the casting call on the way home from playing Money Up – he sent in his audition tape really believing that he was destined to be in this film. Then my feeling on love is that it all comes down to timing, you need to be lucky. If luck wasn’t on Reece’s side, then things with Sorcha wouldn’t have gone the way they did. It was the right time for them. That’s the universal aspect of the film that exists beyond London.
What were you trying to say about young Londoners?
Dhillon Shukla: I was trying to show a lighter side of the city and young multicultural Londoners. When we see kids like these on film, we’re used to seeing them being caught up in stories that centre around drugs and violence. That happens, but it’s also authentic to have films that show the light as well as the dark, and I wanted to balance that out.
“When we see kids like these on film, we’re used to seeing them being caught up in stories that centre around drugs and violence. That happens, but it’s also authentic to have films that show the light as well as the dark” – Dhillon Shukla
In what ways have the themes explored in Money Up taken on new meanings during the pandemic? What does it mean to you to premiere this film at this time?
Dhillon Shukla: I’ve been one of those people who’s been in a bit of a bubble during the pandemic. I haven’t seen many friends, watched TV, or been on social media much so I couldn’t really say. I’m glad we’ve been lucky enough to make the film during such a difficult time, and it’s cool that it premiered on TV with the BBC. All the cast and crew felt that was a special achievement, and I was personally really pleased that we were able to give such a massive platform to so many young actors launching their careers.
What do you hope viewers will take away from Money Up?
Dhillon Shukla: I hope some will see a little bit of themselves in it. Then I touched on it earlier, but (to see that) people with these backgrounds aren’t always involved in the darker side of life. I hope other viewers will remember, like with all communities, there’s always two sides to the coin.