Despite the fact that he had been awake for more than 24 hours, Cash Cassidy couldn’t sleep.

He felt a “popping” in the back of his brain. He understood why he was tired — his group had traveled from Rock Springs, Wyoming, to Las Vegas in a day, stopping to record along the way. But he didn’t feel fatigued or exhausted. He felt wired.

That night, until 4 a.m., the crew filmed an emotional, climactic scene. That night, they filmed the scene that made Cash Cassidy realize that they weren’t just shooting moments. They were making a movie that told a story.

So while his older brother, Nick Cassidy, was asleep on the bench of the teal school bus parked on the side of the road, Cash was sprinting down a desert highway.

In 2024, Nick and Cash Cassidy, of South Portland and Cape Elizabeth, asked themselves the question: “How will we make a cool movie without a lot of money?”

With $8,500 in their pockets, a three-person crew and basic equipment, the brothers created “Childish Things,” a 95-minute feature film that follows a 30-year-old musician’s journey from Maine to Los Angeles to sell his teal school bus, wrestling with whether he should let go of his creative, free-spirited urges and settle down with his long-term girlfriend. And they shot the whole film in two weeks: two days in Maine, 10 days on the road and two days in Los Angeles.

And after selling out a premiere in Los Angeles, the brothers are bringing the film home.

The film is having its Maine premiere on Saturday at Entertainment Cinemas in South Portland. The movie is also showing on Monday, Aug. 11, at the Nickelodeon and Thursday, Aug. 21, at City Theater in Biddeford to open the Vacationland Film Festival.

The brothers, 10 years apart, have helped each other in the industry.

“Nick got me started a lot on the filmmaking journey,” Cash Cassidy said. “I was posting YouTube videos when I was 7 because he was posting YouTube videos when he was 17.”

Nick Cassidy, 32, moved to Los Angeles during high school and pursued his lifelong dream of being an actor. After he graduated from high school, Cash, 22, followed Nick.

Cash Cassidy was the executive producer for Nick’s film, “Fallen Drive,” a feature about a couple seeking revenge at their high school reunion. Though he spent his early teenage years teaching himself the basics of filmmaking and video editing, Cash Cassidy said it wasn’t the same as being there.

“That was just a huge learning experience for me,” Cash Cassidy said. “To be 18 years old, fresh out of high school, on the set of a feature film.”

After working on the film together, the brothers knew they wanted to make something together, and the premise of “Childish Things” sort of fell into their laps.

Cash’s buddy Tyler was planning on driving his bus from Maine to Los Angeles in the summer of 2024. “I was probably going to be on that bus either way,” Cash Cassidy said, though he immediately thought it was a great idea for a film.

“We said we’d pay for fuel if Tyler agreed to run sound,” Cash Cassidy said with a laugh. Tyler became the third crew member, serving as a bus driver, gaffer and grip. And they taught him how to use the sound equipment the day before they started shooting.

The production was “very bare bones,” according to Cash Cassidy. They borrowed two microphones and two light fixtures from the University of Southern Maine and made things work with natural light and long shots.

And in many ways, the story was reverse engineered from this road trip. Nick had just broken up with a long-term girlfriend a few months prior, and he was grappling with the push and pull that artists experience between committing to the lifestyle or becoming an adult the way society expects it. The brothers knew that his character would wrestle with this conflict throughout the film.

But all of the dialogue was improvised. “We knew the important beats that needed to be hit,” Cash Cassidy explained, but they wanted to give the actors the freedom to make the moments raw. The film was shot as a mockumentary, and Nick Cassidy said that “we didn’t want people to know what was real and what wasn’t.”

Their route was their outline, and the locations guide the individual scenes. To save money, they shot where they had friends and families: Vermont, where Nick’s dad lives; Nashville, where Nick’s favorite indie artist, Fairhazel, lives; Denver, where Nick’s buddy lives.

“It’s a movie that has little short films inside,” Nick Cassidy said, with each road trip destination providing a little vignette. One about family. Another about music and love. Another about friendship and loss.

Nick and Cash plan to work together in the future. Cash Cassidy said that they’ve received positive feedback about “Childish Things” so far, and they plan to pitch a few projects in the coming months.

“We have a good working relationship,” Nick Cassidy said.

To Nick, Cash is a jack of all trades, “able to do the job of about 10 people.” And to Cash, Nick is “an actor that we know can do well.”