Fwends (MIFF 2025) is Australian filmmaker Sophie Somerville’s debut feature. Starring Melissa Gan and Emmanuelle Mattana, the film follows two friends over the course of a weekend in Melbourne, exploring their relationship through casual conversations, debated opinions and the tensions that emerge between them.

Somerville talks to critic and former MIFF Critics Campus alumni Vyshnavee Wijekumar about the challenges and freedoms that come with independent filmmaking.

How did you get started in film?

Growing up, I made films for fun, but I never imagined that I could be the director. I saw it as an impossible career that was so out of reach – something exclusively for rich boys with a surplus of self-confidence. After various existential crises in my twenties, I realised I had to give myself a shot at doing what I love doing, even though I was broke and had no self-esteem. At film school, I met some incredibly talented people who helped me to make amazing short films using our very limited resources. I learnt that you are only ever limited by your imagination, which is what gave me the confidence to make Fwends.

What was it like making your first feature film?

Fwends was made with a similar approach to my short films, where I was working with people that I trusted and a really small budget, cobbled together from award money and crowdfunding donations. It was great because it gave us the freedom to innovate, take risks and experiment with process. It was a safe bubble protected from the market and the industry at large, which was very necessary for me at that stage in my creative development.

What inspired the premise behind Fwends?

I wanted to make a cozy film – something cute that gives you a hug. I was aware that Australia is often famous for telling violent, traumatic, depressing, male-driven stories, and I wanted to create something different: a portrait of relatable female angst that finds joy, wonder and a glimmer of madness along the way. The film originally appeared in my head as one long conversation between two opposing minds, like a female Australian version of My Dinner With Andre. I then decided to incorporate Melbourne into the film and make use of our city as a sort of psychological landscape that meets them as they wander through it, traversing the boundary from their performed selves by day to their raw, honest selves at night.

How did you develop these characters and their friendship?

Em and Jessie meet each other at low points in their respective lives after a long time apart. It was important to me that their personalities were diametrically opposed: Em’s a workaholic, Jessie’s a slacker; Em obsesses over the dire situation of the housing market while Jessie distracts herself with TikTok. It felt like I was uncovering two different ways of grappling with our difficult present: we’re either anxious or we’re depressed. Their weekend together is fraught with awkwardness because it’s clear they’ve become incredibly different people – but they cling to the memory of their friendship from when they were younger, because it’s all they have to hold on to. Through Em and Jessie’s friendship, I wanted to portray the deep instability and uncertainty that we feel in our twenties in this day and age.

Above: A behind-the-scenes photograph of stars Emmanuelle Mattana and Melissa Gan | Header: A behind-the-scenes photograph of Mattana during the production of Fwends

The buddy comedy genre is a fun way to explore friendship. I know some of the aspects of the film came organically, but what made you lean towards that approach?

After experimenting with improvisation in my earlier shorts, I decided to shoot Fwends using improvised performances, co-writing with the incredible leads, Emmanuelle Mattana and Melissa Gan, and shooting in chronological order. It’s a brilliant, illuminating way to work, because the film comes to life while you are making it. Rather than traditional directing – where you sometimes end up trying to get actors to deliver you a movie that is already playing in your head – you train yourself to accept the chaos unfolding in front of you and react very carefully to the spontaneous gifts and surprises that it showers you with. Sometimes I describe Fwends as a fictional documentary. But it’s not an easy way to tell a story; it’s often difficult, because you open yourself up to a lot of complexity, and it can go very wrong if you are not in tune with each other. It’s like jazz.

Improvisation as a technique in film has been around since the birth of the medium – it’s not solely limited to the mumblecore movement from the USA in the 2000s. There are some other Australian filmmakers working with this technique making incredible films: Amiel Courtin-Wilson; David Easteal; and two of my friends who have made outstanding shorts, Rebecca Metcalf and Lucien Perry.

There have been a lot of different portraits of Melbourne through film over the years, including Memoir of a Snail. It seemed like you incorporated a lot of iconic locations – including the Yarra River and the steps of the State Library – as part of the story. What was your approach to curating these locations?

I wasn’t on a mission to make a tourism ad, but it was incredibly special to see our home city through the camera – to see familiar landmarks transformed by the language of cinema. There’s something magical that happens when you turn the camera on; suddenly, you’re creating a parallel universe, a dreamy mirror world that makes you see the seductive poetry of everyday life. We saw our ordinary hometown anew, and it kind of made me fall in love. So I suppose if Fwends playing at film festivals around the world did end up contributing to a boost in tourism to Melbourne, then that’s a good thing.

Something that touched us very deeply when Fwends won the Caligari Film Prize at Berlinale was a statement from a jury member – something along the lines of: “It felt like a promise … in a world where perhaps the freedom of women even just walking and talking is actually not a given, especially at night, it felt like a promise of a better world.”

When we were making Fwends, we never saw Melbourne in this way, as a city that the rest of the world might see as a refuge, as a beacon of equality and self-expression, especially for women. But overseas it is perceived that way.

It made me emotional. I was so struck by how lucky we are to live and create here – how important it is that we maintain and improve upon these freedoms and the values that I believe define this city: kindness, playfulness, open-mindedness and love.

Fwends is screening at Cinema Nova from 6 November, Dendy Newtown from 7 November and at Eclipse Cinema on 14 November, with more dates to be announced. Join director/producer Sophie Somerville, producer Carter Looker and cast at a special Meet the Filmmaker screening at Cinema Nova on Friday 7 November – the first 100 people to arrive at the screening will receive a free LaGaia face mask.