Ollie Gardner and Jake Harvey are not afraid to say they love each other.

The two British filmmakers — about to make their feature-length debut with Edinburgh Film Festival’s competition title The State of Us, premiering Friday — are flipping the narrative on what it means to be a man and embracing the intimacy of male friendships.

“Masculinity and toxic masculinity are synonymous with each other now. I’m not sure there is such a thing as positive masculinity,” Gardner wonders to The Hollywood Reporter ahead of their big night in the Scottish capital. “Especially in the public discourse and what young boys are being fed on social media, everything around the manosphere. We’ve had amazing pieces like Adolescence… What we were trying to do in this film is show, okay, well, what’s next? What do we do now?”

After meeting through the admittedly “macho” world of university rugby, Gardner, now 29, and Harvey, 28, peeled off and pursued their love of the arts in parallel industries: Gardner in theater and Harvey in TV. Under the wing of British producer Pippa Cross, who had seen a couple of their short films, they have — in their words — begged, borrowed and stolen to make this movie, and now arrive in Edinburgh with one of the U.K.’s most stirring indie films of the year, anchored by two devastatingly tender performances from Callum Scott Howells (It’s a Sin) and Samuel Bottomley (California Schemin’).

The filmmaking duo deftly tackle grief, nihilism and platonic love in The State of Us, following a boisterous tearaway called Frankie (Bottomley), who is struggling to come to terms with the inevitability of losing his best friend Taylor (Howells) to cancer. He impulsively breaks him out of hospice care for one final night of fun and debauchery. But what promises to be a night of hedonism quickly becomes something much more complicated, as Frankie and Taylor are forced to confront what has been left unsaid about their friendship and respective futures. Frances Barber, Safia Oakley-Green, Seamus O’Hara, Sunetra Sarker and Duggal Ram co-star.

The screenplay, written by Harvey, is loosely based on a childhood friend he lost to cancer. “I really wanted to explore what it looks like when one lad has his whole life ahead of him,” he explains, “and another person who has days left, in a really tragic sense, actually sees more value and excitement in those few days than someone who sees nothing in the rest of their life.” It is with immense sensitivity that the young directors navigate this probing of men and their feelings: The State of Us is, by no means, devoid of humor — Bottomley in particular gives the Bradford-set story an unpredictable cheekiness — but Edinburgh audiences will no doubt leave the theater interrogating the nuances of manhood.

Below, they talk about lifting The State of Us off the ground over the course of five years, Howells and Bottomley’s “yin and yang” approaches to Taylor and Frankie, and making it through the “tragedy” that is British independent film financing: “It was just five years of grinding and being passionate about it, and sticking to it, and making sure that we knew this was the first film we wanted to make.”

I actually wanted to start at the end, because I know this film is dedicated to a friend. I wondered if either of you would be comfortable talking about that.

JAKE HARVEY Yeah, so [he] was a friend of mine from school. We were part of a friendship group that this is all based on. There’s a lot of Taylor that’s inspired by him. He passed when we were 18, from cancer. And that friendship group is sort of characterized in Frankie. His family is coming up to Edinburgh, and it’s the first time they’ve all seen [the film] as well. So that’s a slightly daunting thing, but it’s not totally based on that person. His outlook on life [is what] I would say it’s based on.

This must be a very personal project for you. How long ago did you know you wanted to make a film influenced by his life?

HARVEY Ollie and I met at uni. We were both playing rugby together. And we we were the only two lads interested in theater. Ollie had an idea for a short film — a ballet-based, physical theater-type concept, and we started talking about that. We then related it to this cancer story about a bunch of boys who meet up in a pub every Sunday, where they then negotiate their struggles of this impending grief through movement rather than dialogue. It was sort of our approach to how men don’t really have the words to truly say how they’re feeling. What does that look like if they’re all joking in a room but actually their bodies say that they’re really struggling? Then in lockdown, about two years later, I just decided to try and write something. I was living with and looking after my grandma at the time, who [The State of Us character] Joan is based on. I guess lockdown almost inspired the idea of breaking out of somewhere that you’re locked in — a place of death. But weirdly, it’s quite a happy place, being around people that really see the true value of their life.

I really wanted to do something that was quite uplifting, rather than too heavy or only existed in the really dark space. I looked at how young lads negotiate the darker times with jokes and laughter, and underneath it can be a cry for help. Frankie, for me, was a really interesting character. I really wanted to explore what it looks like when one lad has his whole life ahead of him, and that’s a daunting feeling. And another person who has days left, in a really tragic sense, actually sees more value and excitement in those few days than someone who sees nothing in the rest of their life.

So you both were rugby boys at uni — wow! Were you studying film?

OLLIE GARDNER No, I studied drama, and you (to Harvey) were doing liberal arts. We’ve both been brought up playing sport our entire lives, which is quite the macho, classic lad setting. I think we bonded quite early playing rugby, and it’s where our analysis of masculinity started to come from — all the toxic elements, but then again, some of the beautiful male friendships that we formed.

So Ollie, when Jake came to you and showed you this very gut-wrenching script, what was your reaction?

GARDNER It’s such a process. It was in the works for four or five years. I think we’d always spoken [about] the earliest seed of an idea of what could be. And as Jake was writing it, we were constantly sending each other films to watch throughout that process, from Perks of Being a Wallflower to Good Time. All these references were getting muddled in from early on. Then I really loved the idea of it being a more contained story than something we were trying to do before. We immediately tried to go for big. It was nice that this felt really contained. And there’s never one point where you’re suddenly making the film. You’re doing it and doing it and doing it until suddenly you’re on a set and you actually are doing it.

HARVEY It definitely evolved. And my own mental health came as a bit of a reality in lockdown. Because I was at uni when I was processing [my] grief… Then in lockdown, [I was] suddenly like, “Oh, I understand. Death is all around us.” You really understand the weight of it. I think I really struggled and I was questioning what does it all mean if someone who’s that young has his fate decided otherwise? I became hooked on that. So the first draft was literally me locked in a room. I wrote it in three days. The first act stayed largely the same. The rest of it was, I think, probably a bit crap. (Laughs.) But it was just a bit of a grieving process that came out as a script about these two boys negotiating the value of their lives.

It really was so affecting. How on earth does a film like this get made? Was it non-stop pitching for you guys?

HARVEY Yeah, it’s odd when you get to this point of it because you forget all the times you sat in bed sobbing because you think [that] this one thing that you care about more than anything in the world will never happen. (Laughs.) But the difficult thing about it is there are so many times when you get close or you get some big financier who loves the script and says, “I’ve got all these people that, [I’ll put] all the money into it,” and then three weeks later they drop off the face of the planet and you’re back to square one. We were very lucky to have Pippa Cross as the producer on it. She saw our short, she offered us a job in her production company coming out of uni as part-time development producers, and I sent her the first draft of the script.

She was very much the champion early on. She said, “Keep refining it,” and that she’d be the face of it to take it out with a bit more experience behind her. Everyone faces this challenge in the industry at the moment, but we thought we were going to have three times the amount of money at one point to make this. We had to cut it down to a 12-day shoot, and we shot it in two weeks. It was basically running around with a camera, all first takes.

GARDNER Yeah, the reality is you just beg, borrow and steal your way to make it.

HARVEY (Laughs.) Yeah.

GARDNER It’s the tragedy of the independent British film industry at the moment. There aren’t a lot of routes for funding first-time directors. There are only a few public funders who do it, and even then, the process is arduous, and it’s not always tailored to brand new filmmakers. I think the hardest thing when you’re making a film as first-time directors is you have to convince people you can do the job before you’ve done the job. That’s why it’s really important to build a back catalogue of short films. We went off and did our own thing. I’ve been producing event cinema for the last five years. We had to build our own careers enough to warrant the fact that we know what we’re doing. It was just five years of grinding and being passionate about it, and sticking to it, and making sure that we knew this was the first film we wanted to make.

Then you eventually get a team who are willing to make this film no matter what. So when you have the tough discussions of, “Our budget’s been slashed in half, we would love you all to do it, but we’ll never be able to pay you as much as we’d ideally liked,” everyone just threw themselves in anyway because they loved the story and felt passionate about it.

HARVEY A family mentality was the only way through it.

GARDNER There’s no other way of saying it: [It was] just pure brute force.

What do you hope Edinburgh audiences — and audiences watching when this film is released wider — take away from The State of Us?

HARVEY I really want someone to leave the cinema just thinking of their best childhood friend. If they walk out with a smile on their face, having been on this journey on this night out with these two lads, and their immediate thought is, ‘Oh, I might just text my best mate and see how they are, or just ask if how they’re doing.’

GARDNER Yeah, and to add that, I really would love young boys and young men to watch this film as well. Primarily, I think we touch upon masculinity, and it’s a really tough conversation to be having at the moment, and it’s incredibly relevant. But masculinity and toxic masculinity are synonymous with each other now. I’m not sure there is such a thing as positive masculinity. Especially in the public discourse and what young boys are being fed on social media and everything around the manosphere. We’ve had amazing pieces like Adolescence and pieces on stage like Inter Alia come out, and there’s really incredible pieces of work being made that are shocking audiences into [seeing] the problem. What we were trying to do in this film is show, okay, well, what’s next? What do we do now?

[With] my male friends, it’s purely platonic. But there’s a love there. We (to Harvey) would say to each other that we love each other. There’s a vulnerability there. There’s a strength that comes with that. And I think all of that is really articulated in Frankie and Taylor’s relationship with each other. It’s really important that we start showing young men that you can love another man, and it can be platonic and a really beautiful thing.

How much does a platform like Edinburgh help with scoring a theatrical release? Are you nervous?

GARDNER Terrified. (Laughs.) Edinburgh is an incredible festival. It’s the oldest-running festival in the world, but it really champions independent filmmaking. I think it’s never really forgotten its main purpose [and] what a festival should be, and it should be to champion new voices and risky voices and push that medium further, because that’s what independent filmmaking is about. Edinburgh epitomizes that. It’s lovely that it’s obviously a British festival [as well]. I think that’s really special to us. Our film feels inherently British, but also there’s something really beautiful about it being in Bradford. You very rarely see these northern stories anymore. Growing up in the ’90s, Billy Elliot is the thing that inspired me to do this in the first place. The Full Monty… I think of these amazing, British, northern voices that I don’t see anymore.

HARVEY There is Clio Barnard [director of The Selfish Giant, I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning].

GARDNER Yeah, who’s obviously a pioneer in that sense.

HARVEY And Screen Yorkshire were probably one of the reasons that we were able to get this off the ground as well. They were really helpful and lowered our costs and championed the film, and I think they saw what we were trying to do as well and got behind that. But yes, coming back to the question, we are nervous. We had the first test screening and Ollie was on holiday. Coward! (Laughs.) I felt really confident going in and walked into the room and just felt the blood drain from my body. You know, Frankie isn’t a hero, he’s quite flawed, and that sparked debate when we did a test screening — quite a fiery debate. But that’s no longer up to us.

GARDNER It’s just letting go. The film’s not ours anymore. It’s everyone else’s to enjoy or not enjoy. And we can’t control how people are going to take to it now. That’s an incredibly daunting prospect, but fundamentally so exciting.

This interview has been shortened and edited for clarity. The 2026 Edinburgh International Film Festival runs Aug. 13-19.