The Magic Faraway Director On That Wild Reverse Scene: ‘Tenet With 9 Year Olds’
This summer has been an exciting one for moviegoers, including record-breaking hits like Spider-Man: Brand New Day. A new family-friendly blockbuster has arrived this weekend with Ben Gregor’s The Magic Faraway Tree, which stars Andrew Garfield and Claire Foy. The movie is a visual treat, and has some epic sequences, including one that was set entirely in reverse. And the filmmaker spoke to CinemaBlend about filming it, calling “Tenet with 9-year-olds.” Let’s break it all down.
Christoper Nolan’s movie Tenet featured Time Inversion, where entire fight scenes were filmed backwards. Funny enough, a similar scene occurs in The Magic Faraway Tree, where characters enter a reverse room to cancel wishes they made at The Land of Birthdays. As you can see in the video above, I asked Gregor about how he shot that sequence. He told me:
That’s all I did was rehearse them doing that and we just did it backwards. And I was, it’s like Tenant for nine-year olds. And, you know, the cast just didn’t know why they were doing it. They got really good. The kids got really good at it really fast. And then Dustin, who plays Saucepan Man, because all he did when he came to rehearsal was practice being backwards.
Honestly, my mind is blown. While I thought that perhaps this moment of the book-to-screen adaptation was filmed normally and then reversed, that’s not the case. Instead, the entire sequence was rehearsed and shot in reverse, with even the movie’s young actors meticulously planning their movements to pull it off. Now that’s what I call movie magic.
Later in our conversation, Ben Gregor shared more about working with actor Dustin Demri-Burns, as well as how the crew reacted when the reverse scene was successfully shot for the first time. He told me:
He goes, ‘Ben, there is a film, isn’t there? We are filming a film, aren’t we? Is this just some kind of weird game we’re playing? It’s just like hidden camera show.’ ‘Cause I’m like, ‘Throw the biscuits on the floor and I, but react to it afterwards.’ But yeah, we did it all backwards and the crew clapped when we did our first successful run through of it.
As you can see in the video, Gregor’s face lights up when talking about pulling off that incredible reverse sequence for The Magic Faraway Tree. It’s a technical achievement, and those efforts really pay off in the movie’s theatrical cut. One can only imagine how exciting it was on set the first time the cast and crew pulled off the first successful take.
The movie’s reverse scene was captured practically, and that was seemingly a major goal for the movie’s director while filming The Magic Faraway Tree. He told me why that was so important, offering:
But all of it was for real. We had, you know, we had edible sets the kids could eat. You know, we, we, we, I wanted it all touchable tactile to so that the kids experienced it, the adults experienced it, and they just all felt like they’re doing the best job of their lives. That was my goal.
This sense of joy was a palpable for me while screening the movie, both in the magical fantasy sequences and the ones where the Thompson family was shown playing and enjoying their simple life in the countryside. And I can only imagine how much fun the three young actors who played the Thompson kids had while shooting this new movie.
The Magic Faraway Tree is in theaters now as part of the 2026 TV schedule. The movie was a big hit across the pond, with two sequels reportedly already in the works. We’ll just have to see if it’s similarly successful in the States.