Meet Brendon McDonall, winner of the 2014 Iris Prize for All God’s Creatures – the third winner from Australia. This is the third interview in our "Australia at Iris" series.
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In 2014, Australian filmmaker Brendon McDonall won the Iris Prize with his tender and powerful short film All God’s Creatures. As part of his award, he returned to Wales to make Spoilers—a romantic, sci-fi-tinged story about love, fear, and second chances. The film went on to screen at festivals across the world, earning multiple audience awards and a BAFTA Cymru nomination.
We caught up with Brendon to reflect on storytelling, love, and Iris memories that still resonate.
Winning the Iris Prize in 2014 with All God’s Creatures must have been a huge moment. Looking back, what made that story so personal for you—and how did it connect with the Iris audience?
It was an absolute blinder of a moment. The news hit between takes on my next short, The Dam. A crew member announced that an Aussie had just scored the Iris Prize. We clinked coffee cups, toasting the lucky director. Only later, at the wrap party, did I learn that my film had won. I was completely chuffed.
All God's Creatures_Still
All God’s Creatures wasn’t a literal memoir but a distilled memory—a boy’s fierce sense of justice spun into something new. My brother, mid-teen rebellion, once bludgeoned an eel. Eight-year-old me marshalled a moral uprising. It flipped the script on our brotherly dynamic. For the first time, I had the high ground. In real life, I punished him by blasting Culture Club on the stereo and making him shop at my home supermarket for a week. The funeral was something I arranged privately with the eel to give him a proper send-off. My big bro is a total softie. I had to amplify his dark teenage phase to make the film work dramatically. He was mortified when I reminded him of his eel murder before making the film. He still hates Karma Chameleon, though.
It is challenging to objectively identify what makes a story connect. I was still in film school, searching for my voice. Somehow, Iris saw the queer heart beating under a simple tale of brotherly dislocation. The Iris audience implicitly understood the film’s expression of a little boy’s queerness through a different narrative lens. It wasn’t an overtly queer film in form, and yet it was so profoundly queer in theme and perspective. I wasn’t entirely confident the subtext would come through, so it was such a fantastic feeling to have the Iris family in my corner in that moment. My confidence blossomed, and I’ll forever be so grateful for that.
Spoilers_Still
You returned to Wales to make Spoilers, a beautifully crafted short that’s both romantic and emotionally complex. What inspired the idea, and what was it like creating a film about love with a sci-fi twist?
Spoilers sprung from the wreckage of my own heart. I had recently been through a horrid breakup, and I completely retreated. I had created all sorts of protective narratives to make sense of the grief, and I had a head full of aching questions. If love is destined to wreck us, why do we rush headlong into it? If we knew something was going to end this painfully, how could we find the courage to fall in love in the first place? Heartbreak cracked me open. From that raw wound bloomed a magical realist concept that was an ode to love’s fragility. It was a significant conceptual and tonal swing - with talking lobsters and impromptu story world rules - but the Iris team never flinched. They fuelled the chaos with faith, handing me the tools to make something mad, magical, and unapologetically tender.
Brendon_with Tom & James (Lead actors, Spoilers)
The film was entirely shaped by its process and almost completely organic. I knew I wanted to do something high-concept and operatic, but I only had the basic outline when I arrived in Cardiff 6 weeks before production. Having completely fallen in love with Wales from Gavin & Stacey, I remember landing and immediately begging Grant to take me to Nessa’s Slots. We then drove all around the country looking at possible locations that were classically ‘romantic’ for a spontaneous date between two strangers (literally, two men with ‘matching baggage’) that ended at a midnight screening of their possible future as a couple. Once we secured the key locations, I was able to configure the screenplay specifically for them — Penarth Pier, Llantwit Major, and its spectacular St Donat’s Castle, the charming historical Savoy Cinema in Monmouth, and, of course, the Happy Gathering Chinese restaurant in Cardiff. An Iris institution.
Spoilers being filmed at Happy Gathering
Those quintessentially Welsh locations gave the film its visual heart, then the wonderful actors James Peake and Tom Mumford lent theirs. We shared our romantic scars and discussed our experiences of love and intimacy. Through a lot of improvisation, I was able to tailor the story to them as actors and individuals, rather than casting for characters that already existed on the page. It was arse-about from the standpoint of conventional film production workflow, but it made the story so much more specific. In post-production, I had the unique opportunity to refine the story further during the editing process. We had all these anthropomorphised objects that were coming to life, signalling the alarm on the characters' respective insecurities. These VFX “spoilers” were rewritten throughout post. I reshaped the narrative to match what we had truly photographed as opposed to the intentions of the screenplay — and earned an excuse to linger in Cardiff for three more magical months. I had a glorious housemate in Matthew Crighten, a loving wingman in Matthew David Hill, and the tireless support of Berwyn, Grant, and the Iris team. It was heaven. What a gift to emerging filmmakers.
Green carpet_Brendon McDonall_Iris 2015
Spoilers went on to screen at top festivals around the world and picked up multiple audience awards. What festival experience stands out most for you, and what did those responses mean?
I’m very tough on myself, and I wasn’t sure the film completely worked until I saw it a year later with the most important people: an audience. It was at home too, as part of the My Queer Career competition in Sydney at the Queer Screen festival. I had won the festival three years earlier with All God’s Creatures; the reason the film earned entry into the Iris Prize in the first place. I was unbelievably nervous. Hearing the first laugh was a huge relief, and then they continued. I relaxed. It was working. And when the film took a turn into full-blown melancholy at the Act 2 break, I could feel the audience shift with it. As the credits rolled, a lady behind me said to her partner over a choc-top, “I’ve never seen anything like that one!”. I felt like Galadriel passing the ring test. When it won Best Film and the Audience Award, I was just completely bowled over. I’d swung for the fences with a boldly romantic magical realist story in an age of irony—and it landed. Romcoms were deeply unfashionable at the time, especially in the context of a conventional romantic relationship, so I’m proud of what the film became. It’s got a plucky, scrappy charm, and I owe that to the fantastic team, infrastructure and faith around me.
Tom Mumford and James Peake (Spoilers_Still)
Between All God’s Creatures and Spoilers, your work often explores vulnerability, love, and the emotional cost of connection. Are there particular themes you find yourself returning to as a filmmaker?
Well, I’ve admitted to myself that I’m a romantic. When characters let their walls fall away, they expose the essential threads of our humanity—longing, fear, hope. Those unguarded moments spark a magnetic intimacy that invites viewers to step inside the frame and recognise themselves. I’m drawn back to these stories because vulnerability isn’t a weakness on screen; it’s the raw energy that ignites every emotional beat. I strive to create those fragile pockets of empathy where strangers in a theatre feel less alone and more profoundly seen.
Also, I’m in therapy.
What stories or projects are you currently excited about—and where is your creative energy focused right now?
I’m currently in post-production on three shorts I directed. One is a mad comedy about conspiracy theories, political radicalisation and family dysfunction set at a gender reveal party called Baby Tales & Lizard Scales. Another is an ensemble dramedy about the liminal space between high school and ‘adulting’ called Kinderspiel. It has two very naughty boys breaking into a local kindergarten for a shag. And I just co-wrote and directed a sweet kids’ film called This Side of Somewhere. I recently returned to my theatre roots, directing the debut production of Who’s Afraid by Sarah Walker for Belvoir St Theatre here in Sydney. It was a sharp satire — a reimagining of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? — about two queer couples (one lesbian, one gay) who try to conceive a baby together over one gloriously messy night. I’m also about to step back on stage in my first acting job in ten years for the Sydney premiere of the brilliantly subversive queer “western” Cowbois by Charlie Josephine.
Brendon with 2015 International Jury at Bully's
As for long-form film projects, I was preparing to direct my debut feature Unbending when the pandemic hit and put the kibosh on that. Since then, it’s been endless development. I have completed two features as a hired writer, but I remain fiercely focused on my debut feature as a director, which I hope to manifest sometime in 2026. And, as ever, I’m fizzing at the bung to get back to Cardiff. I’m way overdue for a Paneer Tikka Karahi at The Cinnamon Tree and a boogie at Pulse. I miss my Iris family every day.
Australia had three consecutive Iris Prize winners from 2012 to 2014—including you! What do you think it is about Australian storytelling that connects so well with Iris… something in the water, or just coincidence?
I remember seeing Grant’s The Wilding and Tim’s Followers, and they both blew my mind. Iris went straight to the top of my wish list. A sitcom like Gavin & Stacey obviously can’t entirely reflect the rich cultural tapestry of Wales, but those characters and their values overlapped completely with a Venn diagram of Australia. It was our Kath & Kim: spirited, cheeky working-class characters, a dry, self-deprecating wit, a spunky sense of camaraderie with irreverent banter. Then, of course, we also love that cornerstone of community gathering: a great pub. Egalitarianism and fair play are deeply ingrained in us both, manifesting in a shared resistance to boastfulness and the so-called ‘tall poppy syndrome’. We are so very alike with our “fair go” ethos and larrikin spirit. But as Nessa would say, I won’t lie to you. Your drag queens can sing a lot better than ours.
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