By Emily Nascimento

Every family has their own traditions—for 18-year-old business management student Augustin Sasarman that meant watching movies with his father every night, getting lost in the made-up worlds on screen. Yet it wasn’t until he was 12 that he realized “movies didn’t just make themselves,” rather, there was a job for that. “As soon as I learned, I knew that’s what I was going to do,” said Sasarman.

And that’s what he did. Sasarman had already been internationally recognized as an emerging filmmaker after winning the Parallusion Film Festival award in 2023. At just 16-years-old, he was awarded the outstanding narrative film award for his short The War in The Trenches, which follows two soldiers during their everyday life in the First World War. “It was the craziest luck ever…I didn’t even know I won anything. It came in the mail, this little trophy,” he said.

Sasarman explained he was informed his film got shortlisted but the award ceremony, which was held in Japan, fell on the same day as his only exam that year, so he had no way of knowing whether his film won—until that trophy arrived.

But, his journey into filmmaking actually began when he was much younger. “I was more like seven or eight when I started making little videos, but I didn’t really know what I was doing. Instead of writing an essay at school, I would turn it into a video, things like that.”

He said choosing to go into the business management program, instead of film, “which is renowned all over” came from the idea that “nobody can turn you into a good director. You have to do that yourself. So that’s what I’ve been doing since I was 12.”

Sasarman added that studying business could get him a stable job to pay the bills as he waits for his big break. But he mentioned that, “Whenever I’m done my class, whenever I’m done my tests, I’m out of the business building straight to the film building.”

He said he’s networking and meeting as many professors as he can. Sasarman’s work is greatly inspired by older classics such as Indiana Jones, Jaws and Jurassic Park, he said. “Usually, my films come from listening to a piece of classical music or a soundtrack that I love and then I kind of build the film around it.”

Having made over 25 no-budget short films—not including his feature-length film Chasing the Past, which he wrote at 16— he said he’s hopeful he’s going to make a name for himself in the future.

He said his main motivation to keep going is the idea that “one day, through all this hard work, I’ll be able to make the films I aspire to make.”

The problem with the film industry, he believes, is that “there’s so many misconceptions; you need a camera before you can make a movie, making a movie is really hard and takes a long time…the truth is you can make a short film in a day.”

When he was starting out, he said his filmmaking process included waking up on Saturday mornings, looking around his house for an idea, shooting a film based on that and spending all night editing it.

Now that he’s made a lot more films, Sasarman said he spends more time fleshing out the idea, the characters and script.

But most importantly he said, “It’s all about just starting as soon as you know that’s what you want to do and keep working hard, because filmmaking is a muscle.”

He also launched his own (unofficial) entertainment company, Sasarman Simard Dupuy Entertainment, where he distributes all his films. One of those is his new short Beat Him Up, which came out on Oct. 18.

“Independent filmmaking [has become] very big right now and you don’t really need big studios anymore to make your films… and so I thought, if I’m gonna have my own production company someday, why not start now?” 

Which is something he’s stuck to as he’s now 110 pages into the script for his second feature-length film, Storytellers, which he said is going to be his first fully-funded project. 

While he’s waiting to finish his script before reaching out for investments and grants, he anticipates receiving $20,000 in funding. 

Storytellers is set to be a coming-of-age, comedy drama following a group of friends as they try to create their own film. “People always say, do your first feature film [with] no money… make something simple,” he said. “I thought, [since] I’m really putting effort into the script this time… let’s make the production value good as well”. 

He hopes to have a full cast and crew of TMU students for Storytellers. “It’s just very rare to be able to have the opportunity to work on a student-led feature film…it would be a really great opportunity to showcase student talent.”

Every film Sasarman made was shot on his phone with friends and family as the cast, and now he said he wants to put as much effort as possible to hone his craft. 

“If I could get this out there, then I give the opportunity to people who otherwise I wouldn’t be able to meet,” he said.