It Took Eleven Years to Film the Jebediah Documentary

The Jebediah documentary that just had its world premiere at the Melbourne International Film Festival took writer-director Arlo Dean Cook eleven years to finish. That's worth sitting with. Eleven years is longer than plenty of Australian bands exist at all, and it's roughly a third of the 30-year span the film is trying to compress into 89 minutes.

The result is called Jebediah: Are We OK?, and it was produced by Western Australian producer Brooke Tia Silcox with backing from the MIFF Premiere Fund. It's built almost entirely out of material nobody shot for a film — three decades of archival footage and home movies, the kind of tapes that pile up in a garage when four friends start a band at 20 and never quite stop.

Here's why the length of the shoot matters more than it sounds. A crew that arrives for six weeks gets the anniversary-tour version of a band's life. A director who keeps rolling for eleven years is still there when the good years end. That's the part of this film people are talking about, and it's the reason the title has a question mark in it.

What the Jebediah documentary actually covers

The film runs the full arc: four kids in Perth, the campus-circuit breakthrough, the triple j years, and then the slow grind of a third decade. All four members — Kevin Mitchell, Brett Mitchell, Chris Daymond and Vanessa Thornton — appear, and all four are listed as MIFF guests alongside Cook across several screenings.

Festival material describes it as a cautionary story about the trappings of success as much as a celebration of a friendship that lasted. Coverage of the premiere, including Happy Mag, has been blunter: the later footage deals with addiction and with friendships that frayed badly before anyone got them back.

From a campus band comp to a No. 2 album

Some context the trailer won't give you. Jebediah formed in Perth in 1994 — Daymond on lead guitar, Kevin Mitchell singing and playing rhythm, Thornton on bass — with Brett Mitchell joining on drums about a year later. In late 1995 they won the Australian National Campus Band Competition, which in the mid-90s was a genuine national springboard rather than a line on a bio.

Then the numbers. Debut album Slightly Odway arrived in 1997 and peaked at No. 7 in Australia. "Leaving Home" landed at No. 10 in that year's triple j Hottest 100; "Military Strongmen" came in at No. 33 in the same countdown despite only reaching No. 65 on the ARIA singles chart — a very 1997 mismatch between radio love and retail. Of Someday Shambles, released on 3 October 2000, went higher still at No. 2.

Why the third decade is the hard part

Most band docos are shaped like a rocket. This one isn't, and the structure is the whole point.

When the fun stopped being fun

The film tracks a shift that anyone who toured through that era will recognise: a lifestyle that works fine at 22, on a bus, with a crowd waiting, and works very differently at 40. Reporting on the premiere describes recreation curdling into addiction as the third decade hit. Cook had the footage to show the change happening gradually rather than announcing it in a talking head.

The repair job nobody films

The other half is recovery, and the patience of the people around it. That's rare on screen. Australian music has produced plenty of films about bands imploding; far fewer about the unglamorous years of helping a mate come back, and about whether four people can still be in a room together afterwards.

Who else turns up on camera

Cook brought in three peers rather than critics: Tim Rogers of You Am I, Phil Jamieson of Grinspoon and Janet English of Spiderbait. That casting tells you the film's argument. These are contemporaries who lived the same touring economy, the same Hottest 100 cycle, the same long descent from national radio staple to heritage act — and who can speak to what it cost without needing it explained.

It also puts Jebediah in a specific lineage. Perth is a long way from the eastern-states industry, and the band remained one of Western Australia's most successful musical exports for a reason: they had to be good enough to travel. Kevin Mitchell's parallel career as Bob Evans is part of that story too, though the film's centre of gravity stays with the four of them.

How to watch it from anywhere in Australia

MIFF 2026 runs 6–23 August in Melbourne, but the practical detail for everyone else is MIFF Online, which screens nationally from 14 to 30 August. If you're in Perth, Brisbane, Hobart or a regional town, that's your window — a two-week one, and festival online slots often carry viewing caps.

Whether Are We OK? gets a broader cinema run or a streaming home hasn't been announced. If you want to see it on a big screen with the band in the room, the festival screenings are the only confirmed chance. Otherwise, put the online window in your calendar this fortnight and don't assume it'll still be there in September.