Among Brothers

On November 9th, 1994, Jennifer Matthews, a senior at Bergan State University, was found dead in her burned down apartment. The police informed her family that it appeared to be an accident. Two days later, the autopsy revealed that there was no presence of smoke in Jennifer’s lungs — her death was no accident.

Jennifer’s brother, Tom, dedicated ten years of his life to putting the pieces of this unsolved murder together and compiled his original story. The story was adapted, produced and directed by Schwert, his first feature-length motion picture.

The film takes the actual events and speculations of a tragic event and creates a unique character study of how far “brothers” will go: fraternity brothers and the brother of a murdered girl. Horrifying, because, it might have happened this way. Sad, because the truth is that one life-cut-short inspired the tale.

Since premiering at the Palm Beach Film Festival in 2005, Among Brothers went on to play 15 international film festivals winning awards and collecting great reviews along the way. Although the names have been fictionalized for the film, the true story behind Among Brothers begins with the murder of a college girl during her last semester of school.