School Bus Friends… I think everyone has one, though you might not know what it means. The premise of this film comes from a personal friendship of mine. In high school, I took a bus to school from Abbotsford to Langley in British Columbia. Close to a 40km trip, and almost always experiencing traffic, this trip often took close to an hour. I had several friends on this bus but let me tell you about the particular friendship that inspires this film. 

The friendship was with a girl in the grade below me. We never had class together, weren’t in the same church, so never had church together, and our friend groups didn’t intersect, so we didn't interact with each other in a friend group either. The only time we interacted was on the school bus. We had similar interests and often had deep conversations. After I graduated, I moved down to California, then back to Australia. Because of the inevitability of adulthood and the distance it brings to friendships in high school, we ended up seeing each other’s lives unfold on Instagram. 

That’s the premise, the dynamics of the relationship, however, is much more inspired by the friendship between my wife and her friend. They have been friends for about a decade and became close when they were in high school. Though for them, the more accurate descriptor would be ‘church friends.’ Sofie is very much inspired by the energetic and eclectic nature of my wife.

‘School Bus Friends’ shows the inevitable distance that time brings to friendships. But it also shows that this is not a bad thing. We are all on our own path and friendships will have their hills and valleys, closeness and distance, but in the end, we will always have the memories of the life we lived and the people we met along the way. 

School Bus Friends… I think everyone has one, though you might not know what it means. The premise of this film comes from a personal friendship of mine. In high school, I took a bus to school from Abbotsford to Langley in British Columbia. Close to a 40km trip, and almost always experiencing traffic, this trip often took close to an hour. I had several friends on this bus but let me tell you about the particular friendship that inspires this film. 

The friendship was with a girl in the grade below me. We never had class together, weren’t in the same church, so never had church together, and our friend groups didn’t intersect, so we didn't interact with each other in a friend group either. The only time we interacted was on the school bus. We had similar interests and often had deep conversations. After I graduated, I moved down to California, then back to Australia. Because of the inevitability of adulthood and the distance it brings to friendships in high school, we ended up seeing each other’s lives unfold on Instagram. 

That’s the premise, the dynamics of the relationship, however, is much more inspired by the friendship between my wife and her friend. They have been friends for about a decade and became close when they were in high school. Though for them, the more accurate descriptor would be ‘church friends.’ Sofie is very much inspired by the energetic and eclectic nature of my wife.

‘School Bus Friends’ shows the inevitable distance that time brings to friendships. But it also shows that this is not a bad thing. We are all on our own path and friendships will have their hills and valleys, closeness and distance, but in the end, we will always have the memories of the life we lived and the people we met along the way.