In this multiple award-winning film, after a long time apart, local deadbeat John must take care of reserved schoolboy Jack over a weekend in an insular working-class outpost of Western Sydney. However, Jack’s attempt to re-establish their relationship is threatened as John's self-destructive nature emerges.

Mate is an uncompromising examination of toxic masculinity, maturity, and the challenges of growth within a changing social landscape. Featuring starmaking performances from Joshua Brennan and Jeremy Blewitt.

Director Statement

What would my thirteen-year-old-self think of thirty-year-old-self? Although it might not be explicit, for my co-writer Daniel and I, this film began as a study in depression, and a means to reconcile our personal demons.

Mate centres around estranged father and son, John and Jack, and it was always important for this story to be true ‘two-hander’. Told exclusively from either character’s perspective, it might have made for a satisfying story, but it wouldn’t have been the full story. Indeed, a key element of Mate is the transition and ambiguous inheritance, the handing over of perspective and legacy from father to son. We come into the film firmly tethered to John, but as the narrative progresses there is a gradual shift of perspective to Jack.

Jack is something of a blank slate, threatened to be overwhelmed by the force of John’s personality. However, John is a man unable to move with the times. His identity, views, attitudes toward women, and his compulsive, ill-considered bravado resemble that of bygone era, to say the least. How can Jack find validation in a father in a crisis of masculinity, as each of them struggles with their need for connection?