Ross Syner and David Bradley on the Bond of Brothers

How far would you go to protect the people you love? This is the question at the heart of Brothers, a short film directed and co-written by Ross Syner and starring BAFTA-winning actor David Bradley. The film’s quiet intensity and emotional restraint has earned it places at major festivals, including HollyShorts and Flickers’ Rhode Island International Film Festival. Now officially qualified for the 2026 BAFTA Awards, the short continues to spark conversation about morality, family and the weight of legacy.

Brothers revolves around Nigel (Bradley) a grandfather who raised his two grandsons along with his late wife. When Harry (Jack Christou, Last Train To Christmas) and Kyle (James Eeles, The Batman, Darkest Hour) arrive at their grandfather’s door with the news that one of them was involved in the hit and run death of a child, Nigel faces an impossible choice. What follows is a taut nine minutes of moral reckoning, where every glance and line carries the force of years of family history. “We stumbled across this little true crime thing,” Syner says. “And in a no way is Brothers based on that — it’s not based on anything — but it still sparked that question: What would you do for somebody you loved, or what would you expect them to do for you if you turned up at their door and said, ‘I’ve just done a bad thing?’” Syner explains that this simple but haunting moral test became the seed for the film. “We asked the question to friends and family, just as a bit of a joke, and the contrast in the answers was so vastly different. We thought, well, this is really interesting — so let’s kind of build something off that.”

The film’s stripped-back storytelling style — deliberately minimal and camera-led — reflects Syner’s broader filmmaking philosophy. A highly sought after music video director, Syner has earned acclaim for his dramatic short films, including Francois (2020) and Jack (2021), the latter of which won The Royal Television Society Award for Best Short Film. Syner aims to create stories that feel intimate yet cinematic, and Brothers continues that approach, blending quiet realism with moral tension. The collaboration between Syner and co-writer Leanne Dunne (now Syner’s spouse) proved essential in refining that tone. “It’s the first time I’d worked on a script with Leanne,” Syner says. “And we’ve wrote another one since, because I think we just bounce off each other really well. But the premise of it just poured out, and then you get into the nuances and getting the layers to fit properly. We did a few drafts on it.” 

Syner emphasizes how the script was tightly built around efficiency and realism. “We wanted to make sure we didn’t make it 20 minutes for the sake of it,” Syner says. “We wanted to make sure we could get the backstory of this family within a short period of time without over spoon-feeding the audience … it’s a line here and there that’ll let you know about the history of the family — the parents that aren’t on the scene. And, James’ character will say just a little thing, like, ‘You wouldn’t last long in prison, trust me.’ You know, that’s the ambiguous thing — has he been to prison then? Does he know?”

For Syner, those small details were crucial to grounding the drama. “You learn a lot about this family in a short space of time,” Syner says. “Because of the severity of what has happened — the incident, the police are gonna be all over it,” Syner says. “So the fact that we can get from A to B within nine minutes gives it a bit of realism too, because obviously, there will be somebody knocking on your door pretty quickly if the vehicle’s been spotted speeding away.”

Bradley, who is known for playing Argus Filch in the Harry Potter films, Walder Frey in Game of Thrones and for multiple collaborations with Guillermo del Toro, most recently as the voice of Gepetto in Pinocchio and as “The Blind Man” in Frankenstein, found Brothers to be irresistibly good material and knew he had to be a part of it. “I just read the script — I didn’t know Ross or Leanne or anybody involved in the company — but for me it’s always the script,” Bradley says. “It’s a short film, but it’s a big story. I was just drawn to it. When I heard who my fellow cast members were, I just knew it would be good. And it exceeded those expectations in the result. I was very, very proud to be a part of it.” 

Bradley was particularly struck by the moral complexity of the story. “The fact that, as the grandfather says, this family’s got a bit of a reputation for fuck-ups, to quote him. And yet the love comes from a surprising quarter. It’s not what you expect. How it turns out — the unexpected element to it. And then there’s another one.” For Bradley, the challenge and the reward lay in how much Brothers managed to say in so little time. “To tell that story, that great story, in such a short space of time — and the writing was just so economical and true,” Bradley says. “I thought, ‘I’m gonna do this.’ So thankfully, they asked me.” Bradley’s performance anchors the film, capturing both the frailty and the strength of a man forced to weigh love against conscience. Through his eyes, Brothers transforms a family crisis into a meditation on legacy, guilt, and what it truly means to protect your own.

Looking back, Syner sees the film’s concision as one of its greatest strengths. “Considering there’s a lot going on in the small amount of time,” Syner says, “the script kind of came together quite quickly.” That clarity of storytelling — lean, human and deeply felt — is what has helped Brothers connect with audiences on the festival circuit and beyond. It’s a film that asks tough questions and refuses to give easy answers.

Read more film interviews conducted by Patrick Gibbs:
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Brandon Routh: From Comic Hero to Comic Lead