Spike Kittrell on All My Friends: Capturing the Quiet Heartbreak of Growing Apart

Friendship breakups rarely receive the same cinematic attention as romantic ones, yet they can leave equally profound emotional scars. In Spike Kittrell's tender, largely improvised debut feature, All My Friends, that overlooked grief takes center stage.

Following best friends and bandmates Allie and Jacob in the weeks leading up to Allie's move across the country, the film quietly explores what happens when love between friends collides with personal growth. There are no villains here, only two people trying to reconcile the painful reality that sometimes moving forward also means moving apart.

Shot across two years on location in Boston by a crew of just two people using a 13-year-old HD camera and a single prime lens, All My Friends embraces an intimate, collaborative filmmaking process. Much of the dialogue emerged through improvisation, with the non-professional cast helping shape their own characters and emotional journeys. The result is a film that feels startlingly lived-in, capturing the awkward silences, unresolved conversations, and bittersweet humor that define long-term friendships.

Premiering at San Francisco IndieFest, All My Friends has since won Best Ensemble Cast at the Red Hook Brooklyn Film Festival and both Best Narrative Feature and Best Massachusetts Film at the Somerville International Film Festival.

For Final Cut Magazine, Spike Kittrell discusses building a feature through collaboration, embracing uncertainty, finding beauty in platonic heartbreak, and why sometimes the most important person to thank at a film festival is the projectionist.

Spike, All My Friends is essentially a breakup film without a romantic breakup. What drew you to telling the story of a friendship ending through growth rather than tragedy?

All My Friends actually started as a short film, although not in the typical way. It really only shared the two lead characters.

The short was much louder and showier than the feature, with a sort of ticking-clock tension running through it.

When we premiered it, it was the first time everyone had been back together since shooting. Throughout that night I found myself pitching an idea individually to each member of the cast. First Jacob, then Mel, then Allie.

I wasn't just pitching the story—I was pitching the process.

I'd write an outline that everyone could respond to, rewrite together, add to, take from, with the goal that more than half of the film would eventually be improvised in one way or another.

Looking back, I think I spoke to everyone separately because I didn't want anyone to feel pressured into agreeing in front of the group.

To their credit, everyone was immediately on board. They each brought so much of themselves to the project, and we were shooting three months later.

The story itself just felt natural to me: a platonic breakup story.

Losing a friend because their life is moving forward is complicated. You're taking stock of everything that's leaving with them. And from the other perspective, leaving can feel incredibly isolating because you suddenly realize how much of your life isn't coming with you.

Your director's statement describes the film as belonging equally to everyone who made it. How important was collaboration to the final result?

It was everything.

Most of the film was shot without fully scripted scenes.

If we had two hours scheduled for a scene, ninety minutes would be spent discussing it, improvising, workshopping, and making sure every moment felt right—not just for the film, but for the non-professional cast who had really taken ownership of their characters.

Only after that would we actually shoot it.

That openness made the film feel genuinely collaborative. It stopped being "my" film pretty quickly and became something everyone contributed to equally.

That's honestly one of my favorite things about it. Now we're excited to hand that ownership over to audiences as well.

Working from a thirty-page outline rather than a traditional screenplay sounds liberating—but also terrifying. What was the biggest challenge?

The biggest challenge was simply not knowing how long anything would actually be.

Normally you can rely on the rough page-a-minute rule, but with improvisation there wasn't anything like that.

It became a constant exercise in saying, "Ideally this moment happens around fifteen minutes in," or, "Hopefully we're around thirty minutes by this point."

We mostly shot over three long weekends spread across several months.

Between those shoots I could edit everything together, see what was working, identify what wasn't, decide what needed reshooting or maybe cutting entirely.

So the challenge became figuring out what the story and the characters still needed.

Someone once described the film as "non-judgmental," and I think that came from us constantly asking ourselves whether either character was becoming too obviously right or wrong.

I imagine almost anyone of a certain age has been one—or both—of these characters.

Keeping the film compassionate toward both of them was the challenge throughout.

Watching the film again at Somerville, was there anything you appreciated differently?

The score.

Honestly, that was another challenge.

I made the classic mistake of falling in love with the temporary music during editing, so replacing it was difficult.

But once Jacob, Mel, and I—working together as Twin Blisters—found the combination of plucked strings, humming, and that lo-fi texture, it immediately felt right.

It was completely different from what I'd been temping with, but somehow also completely obvious.

That said, I'm proud of literally every part of the film.

You often talk about "who" being more important than "what." Where did that philosophy come from?

It actually took me a long time to realize that all those names in movie credits were real jobs.

It wasn't until later in high school that I started convincing friends to come over on weekends and make little films together.

Then, in film school in Las Vegas, I met Jacob and Kyle Anderson, who are both in All My Friends.

They completely changed how I thought about collaboration.

I think film school gives you two options when you meet people who are more talented than you.

You can spend your energy trying to prove yourself...

...or you can simply start making things with them.

Las Vegas has this incredible community of passionate, resourceful filmmakers who are always ready to make something together.

That's where I learned that who you're making something with is infinitely more important than what you're making.

Is that same creative family continuing into your next projects?

Absolutely.

The same group is already working on our next feature.

Right now it's in that endless cycle of revisions and conversations, but I think it's a pretty ambitious extension of what we explored in All My Friends.

Hopefully we'll be shooting by the end of the year.

I also recently composed the score for Kyle Anderson's Give It Up, which is touring festivals this summer.

Please go see it.

It's incredible.

And, obviously, it's got a great score.

Festivals have played an important role in the film's journey. What do they offer independent filmmakers today?

I think film has become less and less curated.

I don't mean that in an elitist or gatekeeping sense.

It's just that most of the time we're being recommended films by algorithms and apps, and there's very little trust in that process anymore.

Festivals don't just screen your film.

They're also lending you the trust they've built over years as curators.

That's incredibly valuable.

You give perhaps the shortest festival advice we've ever received: "Meet and be nice to your projectionist." Care to elaborate?

That's honestly it.

Meet your projectionist.

Be nice.

They deserve it.

When asked about the future of film, your answer was unexpectedly funny.

I worry about the future of film far too much to think about it too hard.

Hopefully they get to make that last Fast & Furious movie.

Steven Soderbergh clearly looms large in your thinking as a filmmaker. What continues to inspire you about his work?

Everybody involved with All My Friends is probably tired of hearing me talk about Steven Soderbergh.

But I really am in awe of both his films and the way he works.

Anyone trying to figure out how to make a lot with very little should study him.

He constantly refuses to become bored—or boring.

Even better, he still seems genuinely interested in demystifying the filmmaking process for everyone else.

Is there a film you've recently revisited that reminded you why you wanted to make All My Friends?

I recently rewatched Claudia Weill's Girlfriends, which we borrowed from quite a bit in terms of both story and visual language.

The first time you watch it, it's almost shocking to remember that it's nearly fifty years old.

Every character, every relationship, every tiny interaction feels so incredibly real.

The film simply lets us witness those moments.

It never feels voyeuristic, but everything feels deeply private.

That's something we were absolutely chasing with All My Friends.

Final Cut: Why All My Friends Matters

Watching All My Friends, I found myself thinking about how rarely cinema allows friendships to occupy the emotional space usually reserved for romance. We are conditioned to believe that heartbreak belongs to lovers, yet anyone who has slowly drifted away from a best friend knows those losses can be just as devastating.

Spike Kittrell understands that grief doesn't always arrive through death or betrayal. Sometimes it arrives through success, distance, changing priorities, or simply growing into different versions of ourselves. His film refuses melodrama, instead finding remarkable emotional power in unfinished conversations, lingering looks, and the uncomfortable realization that nobody is truly at fault.

Within the landscape of independent cinema, All My Friends feels refreshingly generous. Its collaborative process is visible in every frame. Rather than chasing polished perfection, the film embraces spontaneity, vulnerability, and the unpredictable chemistry between people who genuinely trust one another. That authenticity cannot be manufactured.

Perhaps most importantly, the film reminds me that independent filmmaking has always been less about resources than relationships. A two-person crew, a thirteen-year-old camera, a single lens, and a group of friends willing to build something together became enough to create a deeply moving feature. In an era increasingly driven by algorithms and spectacle, All My Friends quietly argues for something much older—and ultimately much more enduring: that the stories worth telling often begin with the people sitting around the room with you.