"Between The Batter" was born in the days before I left Calgary for Denmark.

I was preparing to finish my MBA abroad — one month in a country I'd never been to, far from everything familiar — when a chance encounter with the Danish Canadian Club changed everything. It felt less like coincidence and more like the beginning of something I didn't yet have words for.

Denmark gave me more than a degree. It gave me culture, warmth, and friendship. I spent a wonderful month immersed in Danish life, and it was there I met Louise — a remarkable older woman whose grace, wisdom, and quiet depth would go on to inspire the character who carries her name in this story. I also met Teddy Juliussen, the first person from the Danish Canadian Club to reach out to me. Though our connection is recent, it carries the weight of something much longer. Teddy has become something of a grandfather figure to me — offering guidance, perspective, and a kind of belonging I didn't expect to find so far from home. The Teddy in this story is a love letter to him.

The heart of the screenplay — a pancake party that brings together people from every corner of the world — was sparked by a real and joyful morning: Canada Day, July 1st, celebrated in Copenhagen with people from 12 countries and nationalities, Danes included. There was something quietly profound about celebrating where I came from while standing somewhere entirely new.

Months after returning to Canada, I sat down to write. What emerged was "Between The Batter" — a story about adoption, identity, and the complex, beautiful question of where we truly belong. The title itself comes from a kitchen — the space between whisking pancake batter, where the living meet the dead, where forgiveness happens, where everything changes. That question is mine. I was adopted, and the search for self that lives inside every character in this screenplay lives inside me too.

But I was never writing alone. My mother Philomena guided this story every step of the way. Her photograph — the two of us together — sat beside me through every draft. She was my compass. This story is, at its deepest level, a way of healing with her, of honoring everything she gave me, and of saying what sometimes only art can say.

Blood, I've learned, is not the only definition of family. Family is also the people who choose you, the strangers who become kin, and the connections that find you — in a club in Calgary, on a street in Copenhagen, or in the quiet act of sitting down to write.

This is a story of hope. Of mysterious belonging. Of the extraordinary ways we find our way home, and the beautiful complexity of family.

Dharshan Abraham - Writer/Director/Producer