10-05-2025
With or Without You director Kelly Schilling on why she wrote a Mother's Day love story to 'heal' after divorce
Kelly Schilling's debut film is a story about love — but it's not quite a love story.
What: A road-trip movie exploring the relationship between a young woman, her alcoholic mother, and the handsome stranger she's reluctant to take a chance on.
Directed by: Kelly Schilling
Starring: Marta Dusseldorp, Melina Vidler, Albert Mwangi
Where: In cinemas
Likely to make you feel: Like calling your mum
She initially pegged With or Without You as a cross-cultural romance, and says writing it became a "healing process" at the end of her marriage.
"I didn't want to get bitter, and I'm a romantic," she tells ABC Entertainment.
"I didn't get the love story I wanted in real life, but I wanted to put one on the page so I could experience it through my characters."
But after almost 15 years in the making, the film focuses more on the relationship between a mum and daughter — and is released just in time for Mother's Day.
It follows Chloe (Melina Vidler), a young woman who's dedicated her life to rescuing her alcoholic mother, Sharon (Marta Dusseldorp).
Chloe and Sharon soon find themselves on an unexpected road trip after Chloe's ex-boyfriend fire-bombs her caravan, destroying everything inside. They're joined on their journey by West-African man Dalu (Albert Mwangi), a relative stranger who's also looking for a better life.
Despite delving into the cyclical, intergenerational nature of violence, abuse and addiction, as well as the experiences of those seeking asylum in Australia, With or Without You never feels bleak or didactic.
And for Dusseldorp, it's the director's personal stake in the story that makes it shine.
"I knew it would be treated with an enormous amount of respect and care and consciousness," Dusseldorp tells ABC Entertainment.
Raised by a single mum with four kids, Schilling says things were "tough" financially for her family growing up.
While her mum wasn't an alcoholic like Dusseldorp's character in the film, she did experience domestic violence in her childhood.
"There's things that we live and learn from, especially in regards to relationships, and people come through our lives that maybe weren't very nice," Schilling says.
As an adult, She remembers observing one of her partners — who had a substance abuse problem — around her children. It was then that she realised she was repeating the mistakes of her mum.
"For me, that cycle was feeling that I was only really loveable if a man loved me — so accepting less than what I deserved in a man, because I was just lucky if he loved me."
In the film, we see Chloe both pushing against and falling into the mistakes of her mum's past — just as Sharon mimicked her own mother's vices before her.
Much of the film centres on Schilling's message that we cannot save each other — only ourselves.
Chloe spent her childhood picking up the pieces of her mother and, as an adult, is still dedicating her life to dragging Sharon towards sobriety.
Chloe pushes Dalu away, seeing him as just another person who needs her help, just as Dalu is drawn to Chloe's own tragedy, and tries to act as a mediator and support between the two women.
"A lot of women try to save their partners, [and maybe] men do too, I don't know," Schilling says.
"But in trying to save them, you put yourself in positions of possibly danger and pain — until you realise you have no control over their actions."
Dalu's character was inspired by the father of Schilling's two children, who is Nigerian, and the obstacles the director saw him fight firsthand.
Schilling says there was no awkwardness about putting her ex-husband on screen.
"Apart from being West African, he just became his own character.
For Mwangi, his character's story as a migrant and international student struggling to find work is "something I can relate to a lot".
He remembers being told to "get out" of a bus after counting coins for a ticket and coming up short.
"I will never forget that day. I was sweating through every pore in my body, and I felt like everyone's gaze in that bus was weighing on me. It was very embarrassing."
Schilling and Mwangi collaborated on Dalu's character, with the actor editing elements of the script to ensure authenticity.
"I really wanted to maintain his dignity," he says.
He points to a scene where Dalu counts coins to pay for a meal in a diner, while a white waitress pointedly hovers over him.
"He was kind of written as not really seeing [the racist subtext of] what was happening. And for me, that was impossible."
For all the film's themes around our inability to save others, it also celebrates love and the power of small acts of kindness; a tissue from a child on a bus and gentle patience from a stranger in a pub provide key turning points in Sharon's recovery.
"I want the audience to walk away from this film with the courage to forgive themselves for past mistakes … knowing they can trust their instincts. They just need to listen to them."
In her own way, Schilling admits she wrote With or Without You as a love letter to her younger self.
"Writing saved me when I was younger.
Fighting for funding (and time, as a busy single mum) to see her script go from a dream to a reality, has been a years-long battle.
"You just have to tuck it away. And then suddenly, I went to the cinema and I saw the posters up and I was like: 'It's really a real movie!'"
Tearing up, she says the "dream come true" has been overwhelming at times.
"Seeing some of the performances on screen, like Marta and Melina and some of their moments together, actually seeing it thrown back in my face in such a real, powerful way, it was confronting."
Her own mum is "very proud".
"She said, 'If you can find something good out of something that was so bad, and it helps people, then do it.'"
With or Without You is in cinemas now.
