Two brothers with very little in common are forced to take a trip together to honour the last wishes of a recently deceased relative.
2018 marked the eighth time I'd gone on vacation with my family to Gozo, the second, lesser known island in the Malta archipelago. It had always struck me how deserted and peaceful it felt. So this year I turned my family into a crew and decided to make a film to showcase those beautiful landscapes that I'll never get bored of.
While I did give everyone jobs, everyone in the family helped each other out in a really nice way. I also don't understand how my sister managed focus pulling so well with no prior experience but that's just a detail.
I discovered how hard it is to direct and act at the same time. Fortunately, since the characters I wrote were mostly exaggerated versions of my brother and I, my mother was really helpful to point out the things that needed correcting. My father took his producing role to heart and used his extensive knowledge of Gozo to find the best places to shoot. Over four shoots of three or so hours each, the film was done. After every shoot, I would spend a little under an hour assembling the day's scenes, which was really helpful for me. I originally wrote the script as a comedy, but as the edit came together I realized that the film was going somewhere a bit more interesting and real, which directed the rest of the shoots. If I hadn’t been editing daily, who knows where the film would have ended up.
