Lismore's filmmaker Jayden Creighton is gaining international recognition with his debut feature film, which has won an award for Best Screenplay in New York.

We first met Jayden in March this year when The Matriarch had one of its first screenings at the Starcourt Theatre.

The Matriarch is a horror film that took its subject from a theme and borrowed some inspiration from horrific true-life scenarios.

Jayden started shooting scripts in 2012. After a few short films and a web series, this is his first feature-length film.  

Shot in Bonalbo in mid-2023, the film was ready for release in February this year.

The Matriarch was screened locally in Lismore, Byron Bay, the Gold Coast and Brisbane, and in various locations in the United States. The film has been selected for several film festivals and has won a few awards.

“In New York it has just been awarded best screenplay at the New York Horror Film Festival. Which is cool for a film about a mum trying to kill her daughter - what the film is about. We were blown away. People liked it!

“I’ve never been recognised for my writing before, so this is a nice notch in my belt.”

Jayden describes the film’s plot.

“It's about a 13-year-old girl who kills her mother's abusive boyfriend in self-defence. Then the mother sides with the perpetrator and spends the night trying to catch her daughter and do horrible things to her.”

Jayden with his stars (Image provided by Jayden Creighton)

There are plenty of things to speculate on what those horrible things might be, as Jayden talks about the motivation behind the subject, “The idea was to try to touch on some societal themes. You hear all the horror stories about things that are going on in the confines of people's homes and parental figures turning a blind eye to it.”

The idea came from a pitching competition, “There was a thing called the Monster Pitchers Pitch Initiative. Monster Pitchers is a big distributor in Melbourne. They had an initiative that was designed to bring up-and-coming filmmakers into focus.  

“Basically, you had to pitch to them around the theme “mother”. It kind of got the screws turning. We looked into true crime stories - it's very murky waters. We wanted to touch on the issues, but at the same time, make it entertaining and fun to watch, considering the subject matter.”

Jayden won the competition - that was in 2022.

If you want to see the film, you will have to wait a bit, “I’m just shopping it around to various distributors at the moment. We've had distributors and sales agents reach out to us over the past few months.” However, they are yet to sign on.

Jayden does not think it will be a DVD, and a physical showing at a venue is unlikely. He sees it being released to paid streaming like Amazon Prime or Google Play.

Jayden working on set (Image provided by Jayden Creighton)

“It will certainly be on Tubi; they're a bit more accessible to Indie filmmakers because they tend to take low-budget films.”

The budget for this film was $40,000, so think of a well-worn shoestring. Jayden raised the funds himself, “We had a lot of people just jump in, doing favours, a couple of people working back, but really it was just a very low-budget thing. Everyone came out, and we paid them in food and whatever we could afford.”

Now the Matriarch is released and opening up to the world, Jayden has turned back to writing, “I’m working on my next feature. We want to take all the things we've learned with the business side of The Matriarch and try and pop that into this one.  

“Speak to the people I've spoken to upfront and try and get distribution deals that are early in the piece. Now we've already got one up our sleeve, we can hopefully pitch that and try and get some more funds for the new one.”

A Lismore band, Total Buzzkill provided music for The Matriarch. In the new film, they will feature more prominently - and it will still be horror/thriller genre.

“We're going to lean into that more with this one. Make it very musically focused. It's about a band, so it should be a lot of fun. We get to tackle a couple of different mediums then.”

The new film is set in the US, but Jayden plans to film the fake trailer (used to pitch the show) somewhere nearby.

Jayden wants to say, “A big thank you to the cast and crew and all the people that helped, and looked out for our projects. And thank you for for having us on the Lismore App!”

You can follow Jayden on Facebook and Instagram, and see the string of interest and attention his film is getting..

And you can see the trailer, here!

The things you do for the right shot! (Image provided by Jayden Creighton)

Jayden was interviewed by the Lismore App in March this year when his film was shown in the Starcourt Theatre. Read the story here.