Filmmaker Statement

I wrote the script for this film after a series of interactions with strangers coming up to myself and my friend and asking if we were brothers. I found it interesting that someone's curiosity could be so great as to break the unspoken social contract of not talking to strangers (especially in a post-COVID world). As I kept writing I was thinking a lot about how, in adulthood, we make friendships that almost serve as substitutes for sibling relationships or make friends with people who remind us of our siblings. I also wanted to visually represent a side of Sydney that I hadn't seen on film before. We shot Not Brothers on a single extremely hot day in the suburbs of the Inner West. Watching it back while editing, I was reminded of things that felt truly representative of my hometown: deafening cicadas; red brick apartments; trackwork; petrol station kebabs. It's been a year and a half since we filmed and some of these things have gone. Places, much like friendships, are always in flux.