Still Reeling

With more money, filmmaker is ready to roll

After local filmmaker John Schwert, who we last profiled in August 2006 ("Bright Lights, Queen City") made his first movie in Charlotte, he moved to Hollywood. Now that he’s secured funding for his next project, though, he’s coming home to film.
Schwert drew national attention with 2005’s Among Brothers, a true story about the unsolved murder of a South Carolina college student. It "created more of an artistic vibe in the city, which is part of the reason I'm doing my next film here," he says. Among Brothers, which he funded himself, caught the attention of Dateline NBC, which aired an in-depth report on the murder and movie in May.

Schwert won’t be coughing up all the cash for his new project. So far he’s secured $50,000, half of his estimated budget, for the piece he recently wrote called In/Significant Others. "Thematically, In/Significant Others is like Crash or Pulp Fiction, where we're introduced to a series of different characters in the beginning and then, as the film progresses, we see how these characters' lives are intertwined."