A plasterer swapped his trowel for a tripod to make a new movie now being streamed on Amazon Prime.

Luke Mayers, from Folkestone, recruited local actors from Facebook residents’ groups to help form the cast of his gangster flick A Brothers Bond.

The 36-year-old wrote, directed, produced and acted in the film, which is gaining in popularity and has a 6.6 rating on the Internet Movie Database (IMDb).

It was shot in Folkestone, Dover, Medway and Canterbury at a minimal budget of £15,000, with Mr Mayers sometimes covering costs by carrying out plastering work for free at the locations he used.

The number of daily streams of the movie on Amazon Prime is growing, from 62 views when it first appeared at the start of the month to 500 last Saturday.

Mr Mayers told KentOnline: “I am really pleased because the figures are going vertical.

“I came up with the film idea just by writing stories until I found one that clicked and it just all seemed perfect for a movie.

“So I wrote it in script form and then started to post on residents’ groups for local actors that fancied taking part, and I was overwhelmed by the people that had faith in my movie.

“I spent months learning and working on the edit process.”

A Brothers Bond, which features a cameo from retired boxer Joe Egan who sparred with former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson, premiered at the Kavanagh cinema in Herne Bay in September.

With a running time of one hour and 46 minutes, the film is about two brothers, Tom and Danny, who get involved in the criminal world and “get beyond the point of no return”.

While Mr Mayers has been paid by Amazon, he says plastering remains his main source of income.

This is the second move the tradesman has produced. An action-adventure flick called On Top, which cost £10,000 to make, was released last year.

It was an hour and 35 minutes long and was shot in Medway, Folkestone, Deal and Northfleet.

He is now working on a script for a third film.

Mr Mayers, who is married, grew up in Gravesend and moved to Medway at the age of 22.

He has lived in Folkestone for the last seven years.

While interest in A Brothers Bond is growing, it is still some way off from reaching the heights of another gangland thriller filmed in Kent, called Bull.

Shot around Dartford in just 18 days, it was among the most-watched movies on Netflix in August 2023.