BECAUSE WE HAVE EACH OTHER
Sari Braithwaite
Documentary 90'
AUS English language
Festivals Chicago IFF 2023, HotDocs 2023, Screenwaver 2023, IFFR 2023, Antenna 2023, WP - MIFF 2022
A story of tenderness and turbulence, fragility and family, loss and love.
Five years in the making, this exceptionally unguarded and intimate love story finds the core of seven different people with tremendous generosity and clarity - HotDocs 2023
Janet Sharrock and Buddha Barnes, along with their five adult children, form a blended, neurodiverse family. They’re average, working-class people doing their best to deal with life’s mundane, everyday ups-and-downs.
But their ability to cope and see the world as a wide expanse of sky and stars is anything but average. With too many pets and unpaid bills, they work with what they have, recognize how small they are in the vast universe, and realize they’re better off dealing with things together.
“We’re always in the shit, it’s just the depth that varies.” Life is chaotic and hard, things don’t always work out, terrible tragedy, trauma and setbacks befall them but life is also too wonderful and too short to waste. Where some see lack, they see luck and dream of bigger things than society expects of them.
''The heartwarming documentary we need about family, love and neurodivergence.'
- ABC
'Slice of life doc that transcends the everyday. Deftly mixes verité and diarist styles in an easygoing strategy that instantly binds us to her subjects.''
- POV Magazine
'Moving documentary that questions the notion of worth. This is a lovely family, and spending time with them is the greatest gift this film can give.'
'In a world that occasionally ostracises those that seem “different”, these individuals found belonging in a family that thrives off their differences.'
- The Sydney Morning Herald
Director Sari Braithwaite, Producer Chloé Brugalé, Executive Producer(s) Robert Connolly Robert Patterson, Editor(s) Patrick McCabe, Cinematography Jeremy Virag, Composer, Munro Melano, Sound Lachlan Harris
