BRITAIN’S youngest director has released his first feature debut and it will be available in major supermarkets in just three days.

Director Elliott Hasler was inspired by his great-grandfather’s experience as a private in the Royal Hampshire Regiment in World War II.

Elliott began to write the film ‘World War II: The Long Road Home’ at age 14 and the self-financed, micro-budget feature was made with the help of family and friends.

The film, which was completed by the time he was 16, depicts an escaped British prisoner of war’s epic battle for survival whilst on the run in war-torn Italy.

The impressive debut was shot across five countries and spent three years in production.

The film which originally premiered as ‘Charlie’s letters’ was screened as part of the Edinburgh and Brighton fringes in 2017 and it appeared this year at the Berlin Film Festival.

The 90 minute movie is based on the true story of Elliott’s great grandfather Charlie standing who was a private in the Royal Hampshire infantry regiment of the British Army when he was captured by the Germans at Sidi Nsir in Tunisia in February 1943.

The film follows Charlie’s escape from an Italian internment camp as he tries to make his way home to his wife and son in Sussex.

Whilst Charlie is captured and unable to send letters, his wife is at home having to deal with her fears and temptation in the form of a handsome Canadian airman.

Elliott explained: ‘I first became inspired to make films when I was about 10. There was a school project where there was a week without lessons and instead we made a film, that was really my first experience making a movie and the work that goes into it and I just fell in love."

Hampshire Chronicle: Available to buy October 26Available to buy October 26

“I then started making little films on my own which gradually grew bigger and better and at fourteen I decided I’d make a feature.
“I’ve never been to film school but making ‘WWII: The Long Road Home’ was very much my film school.

“The three years I spent working on that film taught me invaluable lessons about the movie-making process across all aspects, from scripting to directing to editing.
“Obviously this is an ongoing learning and adapting process with each movie made, moving you up to another level of understanding and skill.
“These are the aspects of film making I relish and motivate me to move forward with ever more projects.”

Culture Trip stated in their review that the most exciting aspect of the film was Elliott’s ‘ability to tell a story visually without overreliance on talk’.

They added that the film was a ‘phenomenal achievement’ for a ‘schoolboy director’ and that in five years Elliott ‘could be a world-beater’.

Since finishing production on the film, Elliott has created a number of short films and is producing his second feature about the story of the first British woman to swim the English Channel.

He hopes to screen the film in Cannes 2022.

World War II - The Long Road Home will be available from October 26 at Asda, Tesco, Morrison’s, Sky Store, iTunes, Amazon and HMV.