An uncompromising examination of masculinity, maturity, and the challenges of growth within a changing social landscape.

Set against the backdrop of working-class Western Sydney, Mate tells the raw and uncompromising story of two lives colliding over one tense weekend. John, a local drifter unable to escape his own destructive habits, is tasked with looking after Jack, a reserved schoolboy attempting to reconnect after a long absence. Their fragile bond is quickly tested as unresolved pain and reckless choices bubble to the surface, leaving both characters to confront uncomfortable truths.

Directed by George-Alex Nagle, Mate is a stark examination of masculinity, maturity, and the cycles of behavior that shape us. Elevated by remarkable performances from Joshua Brennan and Jeremy Blewitt, the film blends intimacy and grit to explore what it means to grow, to falter, and to face the people who matter most. Unflinching yet deeply human, Mate lingers long after the credits roll.

Mate explores masculinity, maturity, and cycles of self-destruction. What first drew you to telling this story in the context of Western Sydney?

The story was written by Daniel Corboy, Ben Tarwin, and myself, but the origin lies with Corboy.
He was in a rough patch at the time, and having played in bands together in the past, so I suggested we work on a creative project together. He had this premise of “what would my past self think of my current self?”, which sparked the basic idea of an estranged father and son who had to spend a weekend together. I guess it was born out of fear of being on a threshold of either function or dysfunction.

From the get-go it would be set specifically in the surrounds of Penrith, which is the part of Greater Western Sydney where he grew up and was the perfect world for this story to grow out of. As I joined in the writing process, and later Ben, we invested elements of ourselves into these characters and this conflict, and the more the themes seemed to emerge naturally.

The relationship between John and Jack feels both intimate and fractured. What does their dynamic say about generational differences in how men navigate vulnerability?

John is a guy who clearly doesn’t navigate vulnerability very well. He has thick façades of bravado, aggression, and charisma — or so he thinks — to protect himself from deep pain and sadness. For a guy with such a hard exterior, he’s actually quite transparent. But the tragedy of John is that he’s redundant in a changing world, and his refusal to change has only led to stagnation. There are many clues through the film of him living in bygone era. He represents a waning form of masculinity where vulnerability is weakness.

Jack, on the other hand, is also incredibly vulnerable, but in a different way. Not only because he’s young, naïve, and not yet damaged in the same way John has been, but because he’s at an age where he could be on the precipice of adapting to John’s path — but doesn’t. He represents an emerging form of masculinity that embraces vulnerability and empathy, not as weakness but as strength. Even when it’s difficult, and even if it means sharing it with the people who hurt you; like with John in the climax of the film (only after kicking him when he’s down, of course).

The film doesn’t shy away from uncomfortable truths about male identity. How did you balance honesty with empathy when writing and directing these characters?

It certainly was a balancing act. We wanted to tell an uncompromising and confronting story about the darker side of a specific type of Australian male milieu, but we also wanted it to feel truthful, with genuinely human characters who were neither wholly good nor bad. We never wanted to make a film that judged or disavowed anyone, John specifically, and nor did we want to present anyone as entirely innocent or flawless, including Jack.

Although this film is clearly about “toxic masculinity”, I made the decision early on to never mention the “T-word” at any stage of the film’s development or release. Though I certainly don’t condone it, to label it simply as “toxic” would bring pre-existing judgment to the material and the characters, which could have quickly led to a didactic or reductive story rather than a piece that provokes discussion.

Having said that, although many people might have preferred a happier ending, throughout the development it became important to us not to redeem John. To do so would justify his actions, plus he became character that wouldn’t have let us. In the end, I feel we struck the right balance of treating him with empathy, without judging, moralising, or apologising for him.

There’s a lot of truth in these two characters. They’re rooted in real people we’ve known, but they’re also amalgams of ourselves and of many others. Although Corbs and I would like to think they don’t directly represent us, we did have to give exaggerated, flawed elements of ourselves to them in order to create characters you might not necessarily like or fully understand but can still empathise with. From there, it was about handing them over to the actors and letting them bring themselves to the roles.

John is flawed but compelling — how did you work with Joshua Brennan to shape his “deadbeat” energy into something nuanced rather than stereotypical?

Firstly, it was quite a long writing period, which gave us the opportunity to work the character over, test him out, and rethink who he was many times. He certainly evolved throughout the process. And yeah, there was always the danger of both John and Jack descending into clichés and stereotypes, but I think we managed to avoid that.

Josh is an incredible actor and an excellent human being. He’s not just a highly skilled performer, but also intelligent, dedicated, and humble—quite the opposite of John, just in case you were wondering. He’s not the kind of actor who needs to rehearse much, nor did I want to in this case, because I wanted to keep the performances fresh, spontaneous, and naturalistic. But he’s big on preparation. We talked a lot about the character and the world, and then he had to take the character we’d written and make it his own.

On set, we had the luxury of being able to improvise and try scenes in different ways, sometimes more natural, shambolic, and chaotic, other times more subtle. I wasn’t overly precious about dialogue or sticking to the script word for word. If Josh wanted to try something different, we did that. All these approaches added nuance, layers, and unpredictability to John, creating a character who truly feels like a deeply flawed but real person. I had a number of people come up to me after screenings to say, “I know that guy.”

Jeremy Blewitt’s performance as Jack feels restrained yet powerful. How did you guide him in embodying such a quietly resilient character?

Jez was quite young at the time, but scarily talented, skilled, and intelligent for his age. And not to mention professional. We had one day of rehearsals where we got the key group together—Josh, Jeremy, and Melody Kiptoo who plays Krystal—but even that was mostly just discussing the material and the characters together, not necessarily running scenes. It was more about preparing to be unprepared.

I had many conversations with Jez during pre-production, mostly over zoom (it was the COVID days) and gave him some character-building exercises. The tie he gifts John, for example, he personally went out and bought himself. I think Jez was a little intimidated by Josh at first, and I like to think that comes through on screen. In the first scene we shot was the kitchen scene, where Jack arrives at John’s house and almost instantly fails to connect, that’s only about 50% acting.

As a young actor, he sometimes tended to go big and, well, act, so much of my work on set was helping him go smaller and just be himself in the moment. “Give me less, Jez” was probably my most common direction to him.

Western Sydney plays an essential role in grounding the story. How did the environment influence the tone and authenticity of the film?

Hugely.

Sydney isn’t a huge city in terms of population compared to other major cities, but geographically it’s one of the biggest. And most of Sydney is Western Sydney. It’s just so vast and diverse that it’s impossible to pin down as one thing. But what it’s certainly not is the export image of Sydney.

Our story is set and shot on the western rim, in the surrounding areas of Penrith—Werrington, and Kingswood—which is about as far as you can get from the beaches and the bridge while still being Sydney. Some of the interior locations were actually closer to the geographic centre of Sydney, which is still Greater Western Sydney.

Some parts of it can feel quite insular, while other parts feel like completely different worlds or cultures from each other. The west, like a lot of Sydney, has been going through a lot of change in recent times, specifically infrastructure and housing developments to accommodate the city’s ever-growing sprawl. This visibly shifting, culturally and economically peripheral landscape was the perfect world for our story, but also the world the story itself arose from. And it’s this world that John finds is changing and developing around him, leaving him behind.

The film focuses heavily on insularity and limited escape. Was that isolation built into the script from the start, or did it evolve through production?

Yes, absolutely. John isn’t necessarily physically isolated from other people, but he’s emotionally and psychologically isolated. Even though he regularly—if not daily—goes to the pub to socialise and plays the role of the larrikin, he doesn’t actually have any real friends.

In earlier drafts of the script, John was living in a small flat in a large apartment complex, showing that he was isolated while being surrounded by other isolated people, like a prisoner in a cell. Although I’m much happier with the house location we ended up using, which brought additional thematic ideas, I don’t believe the sense of isolation through proximity was necessarily lost.

Jack is also isolated or at least feels like he is. We get hints that he’s bullied at school, and being in seventh grade—the first year of high school here in Australia—already puts him in a vulnerable spot. On top of that, his mother has a partner with whom she has a very young child, so I’m sure Jack must feel isolated in his own home as well.

For the brief moment at the film’s climax, both characters experience vulnerability and a genuine sense of connection. But whereas I feel Jack may no longer feel quite as isolated moving forward, I can’t say the same for John.

What are the books, podcasts or even YouTube Channel that you recommend young filmmakers to get their hands on? 

Books? Any books. Just read. Digest stories, philosophy, history, art—whatever. Just learn, and live. Take influence from the world around you and from as many other art forms as possible. Personally, I find myself most inspired when I go to art galleries, see live music, or even watch sport. And of course, by studying people, especially those closest to me.

There are lots of great podcasts—The Treatment with Elvis Mitchell—and many YouTube channels—the most obvious one that comes to mind is Film Courage, where you can hear a lot of filmmakers’ perspectives and recommendations. But you’ll quickly discover that they all differ. Everyone has their own thoughts and opinions based on their own experiences, wins and failures. The most important thing is to start gathering your own experiences. Don’t copy anyone, and don’t blindly follow anyone’s teachings or recommendations as if they’re rules for how filmmaking needs to be, especially if that’s what they claim. Don’t ask permission, make your own mistakes, and carve your own path.

Can you share with us some of your favourite short films you’ve seen lately

I watch a lot of shorts, I love the medium, so I could list heaps of films here.

But I typically don’t love most of the films that make it all the way through the voting system to become Oscar nominees. But one film that had a huge impact on me, and was influential on Mate not just in tone but also in its scope and form, was Just Before Losing Everything by Xavier Legrand. It’s easily one of the best shorts I’ve ever seen. It throws you into a slowly unfolding crisis with no context or exposition. Tension festers, and it’s utterly gripping. It gives you a contained story in 30 minutes that rivals features, while still feeling like part of a much bigger story.

Another that really struck me was this year’s nominee The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent by Nebojša Slijepčević. I loved it for similar reasons, but what stood out most is how it cleverly subverts a fundamental “rule” of storytelling: that the protagonist must be active. Here, when the character does not act and someone else does, it implicates not him, but us as viewers and fellow bystanders, because chances are we would have done the same thing: nothing. That’s powerful.

Neither film won, but they should have.

Also, shout-out to Sam and David Cutler-Kreutz and their new film Trapped.