Hollywood’s queer character portrayals have Dylan Brady fed up
In ANON, his unsettling directorial debut, Dylan Brady swings at queer-cinema conventions, insisting queer characters deserve messy moral lives—so does the dare land?
The short film that Dylan Brady has been itching to make doesn’t hold your hand. In ANON, a late-night ride between a closeted cabbie and a young male passenger grows increasingly uneasy, and the story refuses the kind of neat, reassuring ending that’s become common in recent queer dramas. The lead is played by Con O’Neill, and Brady leans into ambiguity from the jump — no tidy speeches, no soft landings.
That’s the point. Brady says he’s tired of seeing LGBTQ+ characters sanded down into safe, saintly versions of themselves. He wants the mess — jealousy, fear, obsession — on screen too, and not treated as a step backward for representation.
“I think it ’s important that queer characters and characters from different parts of the world are able to be just as complicated and murky and interesting as everyone else.”
He said it in a recent interview with Film Updates, adding that he isn’t arguing against positive stories so much as questioning why upbeat arcs are so often treated as the only acceptable ones.
From actor to director
Brady, 29, has been building a career as both an actor and a writer. He told Attitude that directing wasn’t some childhood goal so much as a realization that he’d have to make the kinds of stories he wanted to see himself. His screen credits include:
- Mary & George
- The Diplomat
- Sebastian
- Netflix ’s Everything Now
He wrote and directed ANON after being mentored through the BFI Flare x BAFTA screenwriting program by filmmaker Andrew Haigh.
Getting it financed was tougher. Brady has said he struggled to land backing and ended up putting in his own money. He also crowdfunded a chunk of the budget, celebrating with supporters when the campaign hit its goal on April 9, 2024.
The story, he’s explained, pulls from his own memories of growing up — how the exact same encounter can feel radically different depending on your age, where you live, and how visible or invisible your queer identity feels. He pours those contradictions into a thriller frame, rather than a coming‑of‑age comfort story.
There’s a formal twist, too: ANON was shot entirely on dash cameras in Brady’s hometown of Derby, pinning the drama to the cramped vantage points of a car and the secrets its passengers carry inside it.