Author: Newsroom
NEW YORK, NY (March 9, 2025) – Six-time Academy Award winning filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola has joined Ari Gold’s (The Song of Sway Lake, Adventures of Power, Helicopter) narrative feature, BROTHER VERSES BROTHER, as Executive Producer ahead of the film’s world premiere at the SXSW Film Festival on March 9th.
Inspired by Coppola’s concept of Live Cinema, director Ari Gold embarked on a radically personal musical odyssey alongside real-life twin, Ethan Gold, in making BROTHER VERSES BROTHER. As their characters search for their father across the great and troubled city of San Francisco, they paint a vision of Bohemian culture, blending cinema with reality to create a dream of the comedy and pathos of modern America.
BROTHER VERSES BROTHER is a tale of siblings searching for meaning – in songs, in love, and in the city around them. Featuring improvised performances from the cast – all playing fictionalized versions of themselves – the narrative feature follows combative and codependent twin musicians as they hunt for their dying poet father. Made in the tradition of intimate stories like ONCE and BEFORE SUNRISE and presented as an unbroken real-time shot, the story invites audiences on an adventure through the streets of San Francisco that becomes a testament to the power of music, the bonds of family, and the lifeblood of a city.
“When I read Francis Ford Coppola’s book ‘Live Cinema and Its Techniques,’ one paragraph struck me like a thunderbolt: ‘I have always loved when art works are what they are about. To me that is the holy grail of art, but perhaps I’ve only touched on it briefly.’ I took Coppola’s book as a call to arms, and set out to make a ‘live cinema’ musical film in the North Beach neighborhood we know and love, and using his principles – with my brother and father and friends playing versions of ourselves, and where the invented story and our real lives blur.” says Ari Gold. “We all ‘play ourselves,’ even in real life – this was an opportunity to find the truth hiding in that game.”
Ethan Gold’s original music and songs featured throughout provide a heartfelt rhythm to the film, with performances by Ethan and Ari Gold (The Brothers Gold) and co-stars local jazz legend Lara Louise, Brian Bell (of the band Weezer), and San Francisco’s Poet Laureate Tongo Eisen-Martin, bringing the Live Cinema-inspired film to life.
“Coppola’s idea of Live Cinema was a great musical challenge. The character ‘Ethan’ is an amplified (or acoustified) version of the person I am in real life. I stripped down songs to bare essentials to play an artist who isn’t sure he wants to engage with the world, or his brother, but he loves the city and the night air. There are songs about retreat, about the struggles of other outcasts and artists, and a song ‘The Fog Man’ about a huge personal retreat in the years after a head injury. The film’s central song ‘Brothers Keep Goin’ Anyway’ is an ode to brotherhood, and to recognizing the need to separate from the bonds of family. In between these songs we perform on screen, the humble score centers around a piano theme which dots the landscape of the film as a broken-down echo of the jazz of Beat-era North Beach.” says Ethan Gold.
A Grack Films production in association with Atypical Project, BROTHER VERSES BROTHER stars Ari Gold and Ethan Gold acting alongside their father Herbert Gold, Lara Louise, Brian Bell from Weezer, and poet laureate Tongo Eisen-Martin. The music and original songs are by Ethan Gold. The story is by Ari Gold and the film was written by Ari Gold, Ethan Gold, and the cast. It was produced by Michelle Stratton, Starr Sutherland, Ari Gold and Maya Browne.
Visit Films is handling the sale of BROTHER VERSES BROTHER out of the SXSW Film Festival.