Director Richard Bell and actor Gage Munroe were there Thursday morning to present the film and answer questions after the screening.
“It’s particularly meaningful that young people are coming to see this movie because usually our audiences skew a bit older - that’s the era that still goes to the movie theatre,” said Bell. “So it’s great that they’re coming today because this is a young person story.”
The story focuses The Brotherhood of St Andrews, a boys leadership camp on Balsam Lake. As the boys and their leaders take off by canoe, a freak summer storm hits and what follows is a combination of light and dark, as viewers learn more about the characters and their past.
“Older audiences are seeing it because they remember the halcyon days of summer and that camp experience but I want younger people to see it because it’s a young person survival story. Seeing that kind of heroism that these young people exhibited 95 years ago is very meaningful. I hope it makes kids go ‘would I do that?’,” said Bell. “I think that’s why we go to the movies - to see stories and think ‘would I do that?’.”
Though Brotherhood was filmed in 2017, being set ten years after the Spanish Flu pandemic, themes that arise throughout the characters stories might be somewhat reflective of the world today. High school students in attendance on Thursday had the opportunity to reflect on The Great War, the Spanish Flu, and ‘what it means to be a man’.
