Set in rural South Africa, the film follows the coming of age of Janno, a shy 15-year-old farm boy who must contend with the arrival of a sudden new addition to the family and the desires this awakens within him.

The setting and storyline were inspired by Kallos' travels around the remote Eastern Free State region of the country and his encounters with farm families there.

One day his mother (Juliana Venter), fiercely religious, brings home Pieter (Alex van Dyk), a hardened street orphan she wants to save, and asks Janno to makes this stranger into his brother.

He used award money from the Golden Lion he won at the Venice Film Festival for his short Firstborn (2009) to help fund research trips to the Eastern Free State.

[6] Kallos told The Writing Studio, “the experience of fracture is important to me as a storyteller, to love and hate in the same breath, to belong and be a stranger at the same time: You grow up oblivious and then, suddenly, as a teenager, you realise that you don’t really belong in your family, in your community, in your culture.”[6] The two lead actors, Brent Vermeulen and Alex van Dyk, were cast locally, with Vermuelen not being cast for the lead role until two weeks before production began.