Film "Steady Eddie" undiagnosed in the 60s

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Joshua Amar calls filmmaking his sandbox, a way to live out childhood fantasies and play in worlds that don’t exist.

The American Film Institute graduate used the practice to explore his relationship with his older brother, who has Asperger’s.

The result is Steady Eddie, which will screen at the Bermuda International Film Festival next month.

Set in 1960s America with the Vietnam War looming, 12-year-old Jesse struggles with accepting that his autistic brother might die fighting, and escapes into the wilderness with him.

“With a lot of coming-of-age films you have a child learning to become an adult, but when you see him he’s cleaning up, fixing the mess.”

His own brother was “at times very violent” when they were growing up, the filmmaker said.

Especially because the family didn’t talk about mental health, it made being around him “a little bit scary”.

"I grew up thinking that he was a bully and that he was doing mean things because he liked to be mean sometimes.

“I didn’t really have a complete understanding as to where he was coming from because I just didn’t know.”

He said it’s easy to label a person as “bad” or “mentally ill” without understanding the diagnosis.

“People with autism or Asperger’s are not mentally ill; they have a completely different world view,” he explained.

t is implied, but not said that the movie’s 18-year-old Ed is on the spectrum.

“We never say, because the characters don’t know,” Mr Amar said.

Autism wasn’t discovered until the next decade; Asperger’s was being discussed in the Nineties.

“It was very far off from our characters in 1969, but very close to my experience,” Mr Amar said. “I didn’t really know, my mom didn’t really know, my dad didn’t really know, my other brother didn’t really know — we just had to feel it out.”