Mother Father Sister Brother Frank

Best Narrative Feature Film

Runtime: 1 hour, 25 minutes
Directed by: Caden Douglas

Overview:
“Endlessly entertaining old-school farce with a healthy dose of blood and nonstop laughs” – Morbidly Beautiful.
“Not a single minute of this fast-paced caper is anything short of side-splittingly funny” – Morbidly Beautiful.
“Laugh out loud funny and delightfully deranged!” – Downright Creepy.
“A blood-soaked blast! …puts the “fun” in “dysfunctional family” – Gruesome Magazine.

The Jennings family couldn’t be more painfully suburban, but when asshole Uncle Frank crashes their weekly Sunday dinner with a nasty surprise, murder turns up on the menu. Can the Jennings’ overcome secrets and dysfunction to learn that, the family that slays together, stays together?

Director Biography – Caden Douglas: Caden grew up in snowy Calgary AB, and after living in Toronto for a decade he now resides in sunny LA, where he works as a screenwriter, director, and producer.

As a director he was won multiple awards for his short film POP, including the Leslie Paige Award for Excellence in Short Filmmaking, and the Gold Award from LA Shorts. He has directed pieces for the Los Angeles LGBT Center 50th Gala produced by the multiple award winning, and Emmy nominated Done + Dusted.

As a writer, Caden has partnered with major companies on both feature and episodic projects. Previous select projects include feature The King and Eileen optioned by Johnny Depp’s production company Infinitum Nihil / G4C and pilot Tuck, Montana optioned by Dave Hill/Gumption Pictures. Caden was hired by Lotus Entertainment to write the feature comedy Dosed, as well as the feature adaptation of Alex Gino’s award-winning novel, George (Scholastic) for Lotus/Racine Films.

Caden produced the short form series What the Elf?! starring multiple Emmy nominee, and Cheers alumni, George Wendt. The series was produced by his production company littleBULL, which he founded with his husband, Dora nominated actor/producer Michael Lomenda in 2016.

Currently Caden is developing a new feature comedy, American Beef.

Director Statement:
Mother Father Sister Brother Frank is a love letter to my real Mom, Dad, and Sister. Well kind of a twisted love letter I guess…

My parents still live on the snowy suburban street where I grew up. Like the Jennings, we were a meat n’ potato family and a lot of the time we kept our feelings bottled up and buried deep. It was cold, it was conservative, and conforming to the norm was basically an Olympic level sport. Being a queer kid there was…well let’s just call it challenging.

There’s a particular isolating sadness that comes in the dead of winter, when it’s negative 20 outside, the days are short, and you’re trapped in a small house with the people you love, but who feel a million miles away because there’s a secret keeping you apart. That secret, that silence, felt like an insurmountable gulf for me.

The weight of it was crushing, and the only thing that helped me—was the truth. Being brave enough to share my truth with my family ultimately ended up bringing us closer together. Was it hard as hell to kill the shame and fear I felt? For sure. But was it worth it? Absolutely.

There are spaces in relationships, marriages, families, where we can hide in the unspoken, unable to face the truth. It’s too hard, too dangerous, too vulnerable. But like Dad says in this film, to make a relationship work you have to be brave enough not to hide from each other. And hopefully this film will help you to realize …you’re braver than you think!

I’m hoping that after watching this film you’re going to want to call up your family and tell them how much you love them! Or better yet, pull them all into a big family bear hug! Because facing the truth alone can seem impossible, but when we come together, we can kill our “Uncle Franks”—no matter what form they take.

More broadly speaking, the Jennings are an allegory for our community and society at large. We’re living in a world where more and more the truth is becoming elusive. But if we’re going to get through all the challenges facing us as a society—whether it’s the climate crisis, or social justice and inequality—the only way to tackle these issues is to take a page out of the Jennings playbook—we have to come together, face the hard truths and do the dirty work that’s required.

It’s family, murder, comedy, heart, and a dash of horror. All mixed together and served up with a delicious slice of Mom’s Banana Breeze Pie.