No-budget, caffeine-fuelled Brisbane flick to premiere on the Gold Coast
Stephen Vagg discusses world premieres and ther caffeine-driven budget blow-out of his new movie, which is about to hit the big screen at this year’s Gold Coast Film Festival.
In film festival land, a movie’s “screening virginity” is a precious thing. You can only ever have one world premiere and many festivals like to be the first to do that screening. Indeed, some flat out will not touch a movie that has been “sullied” by a prior screening.
If you think that’s silly, well, I’m inclined to agree with you but, trust me, when you present a screener of a movie film to a festival programmer, they often ask for a purity ring too.
In 2025 director Louise Alston and myself, along with an amazing cast and crew, made the feature All My Friends Are Back in Brisbane. The budget was $13,000. It was meant to cost $10,000, but this blew out due to catering and when people started expecting coffee. (The film was shot in New Farm, West End and the CBD – all notorious for high rates of caffeine addiction.)
Like all moviemakers, Alston and I had to consider which festival would be our movie’s “first”. We didn’t have to go the festival route, but we figured that it would add to the film’s exposure – DIY movies need all the breaks they can get. Also, we wanted to see if we could give our cast and crew a glamorous red-carpet launch that we did not have to pay for ourselves.
Of course, the festival had to want to take the movie – purity or not, the exchange has to be via mutual consent. And we were realistic. We had made a feature for little more than the equivalent of two Neighbours script fees (no joke, that’s literally how I financed it). We weren’t the cool kids, the movie didn’t have stars. It was from Queensland and it’s a rom-com.
That still left us with options – as there are more than 12,000 film festivals worldwide. But we only had one in mind: the Gold Coast Film Festival, which runs from April 22 to May 3.
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There were a few reasons for this. The GCFF is a Queensland event, so we figured its programmers would understand the themes of the story. Also, screenings on the Gold Coast wouldn’t cut into the potential cinema audience of Brisbane. The festival is historically supportive of Queensland stories (rarer than you would think among Queensland cultural organisations). And many of our cast (Brooke Lee, Tim Ross, Kym Jackson) are Gold Coasters.
But, most of all, Alston and I had attended the GCFF a number of times over the years, purely as audience members, and always found it to be extremely well organised (important) and a lot of fun (crucial).
But, then, the Gold Coast is perhaps the most film-friendly city in Australia (Adelaide might match it). Alston and I have worked on the Goldy a bunch of times over the years and have always been knocked out by the work ethic there.
Everyone seems to be an entrepreneur on the coast. They are self-starters who are willing to put in the hard yards, which might explain why the movie studios are always busy, and why the locals are annoyingly good-looking (with Somerset College’s Margot Robbie being Exhibit A).
So, we submitted a rough cut of All My Friends, they decided to program it, and we could not be happier. The movie debuts May 1 at Dendy Southport, with a red carpet I don’t have to pay for, before kicking on to a season at Five Star Cinemas New Farm, in Brisbane, from May 29.
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This year’s Gold Coast Film Festival will be busy for me – not only through stuff involving my movie – interviews, trying to find pants I can fit into for the premiere – but also to catch up with other films I want to see.
Opening night (April 22) is Warwick Thornton’s visceral western Wolfram, while closing night (May 3) is Don’t Be Prey, a documentary about a man doing the world’s most dangerous swims (don’t be rude, the Brisbane River isn’t one). Both films are Australian.
There is going to be a red-carpet screening of Beast, the Russell Crowe/Daniel MacPherson riff on Rocky IV, which looks like it’s going to be a big one at the box office.
International movies include The A.I. Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist, which was a big hit at the Sundance Film Festival; Agnieszka Holland’s biopic of Franz Kafka, Franz; and a New Zealand film about the 2010 mining disaster, Pike River.
There are also special screenings to celebrate the anniversaries of Zoolander and The English Patient (Want to feel old? These are grouped in “classics”). Plus, there are panels, short films, web series, galas and lots of other movies (apologies for anyone reading if you are upset that I did not list your film, but there are so many).
Finally, there’s the coffee and dialogue heavy (because we couldn’t afford anything else) All My Friends Are Back in Brisbane.
It’s all enough to make you want to stay inside, which is saying something for the Gold Coast. Oh, and it turns out the GCFF didn’t care about our movie’s virginity, which is kind of how you want your first partner to feel. Hope to see you there.
The Gold Coast Film Festival runs April 22 to May 3.
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