by Dov Kornits
The new Australian documentary Like My Brother – which tells the story of four indigenous young women – is set to grab audiences at the upcoming CinefestOZ Film Festival.
“Originally, even before I met the girls, I originally thought it was going to be a TV series,” reveals Like My Brother co-director Sal Balharrie to FilmInk. “I thought it would be a six-part TV series. But then the story started to reveal itself, and we realised we had something. Not to say that a six-part series isn’t special, but we started to realise that we actually had a cinematic experience, and something that was going to look beautiful on the screen, even though some of it was shot on my phone. I met these girls on day one of filming, and the very, very, very first moments of shooting have made it into the film…all from my phone! We first met way back in 2018.”
That would prove to be a very fateful day indeed. When Sal Balharrie met Freda, Jess, Julie, and Rina, four indigenous Australian girls from the remote Tiwi Islands – home to numerous legendary AFL players, including the many Riolis, among others – who dream of playing AFLW professionally, she couldn’t even have imagined where the lives of the eventual documentary subjects would lead.
“We’re looking at story and family,” adds Balharrie’s co-director Danielle MacLean, who came onto the project more recently. “And intergenerational storytelling too. We’re looking at the importance of culture and the importance of place and how that plays into how these girls play football as well. They’re really special players and their culture is really important. I got to know the girls, and they were just so open with me the minute I met them. There was such a lot of community support behind the film too, and I just felt like that was really fantastic…it’s a really great story.”
That great story is now slowly but surely being taken out to the world, with Like My Brother premiering at The Melbourne International Film Festival, and now gearing up for a second major screening at the upcoming CinefestOZ Film Festival in Western Australia. Like My Brother will also screen as the opening night film at The Darwin International Film Festival in September. Pretty soon, Australia may very well have four new sporting heroes in Freda, Jess, Julie, and Rina. “They were brave enough to dream…and dream big,” says Danielle MacLean.
For more information on The CinefestOZ Film Festival, click here.
