Sydney Film Festival - Another happy family film - BIRTHRIGHT (Zoe Pepper, Australia, 2025)

Maria Angelico, Travis Jeffery, Birthright

I wish I had written down one phrase uttered by director Zoe Pepper in her introductory remarks to the screening of her film Birthright at the Sydney Film Festival. Suddenly  a remark was made that sought to elevate the film to a level where it's comedy and drama have ultra-significance for Australian society as we endure the twin nation-destroying crises of cost of living and housing unaffordability inflicted on us by the do-nothing showboating Albanese government, crises unlikely to be solved in anyone's lifetime by Albo and his crew of chancers, opportunists and ne'er do wells who have stolen our politics and have embarked on a journey designed to inflict endless pain on us all for the next generation or even beyond. Right...got that...

But I didn't remember the words and so I'll have to let it go...

Not too long into Birthright I kept thinking this film is picking up on some familiar tropes. The laugh out loud but frequently violent satires of Miike Takashi came to mind, but as the film upped towards some quite unexpected violence, it seemed to me that the method, if not the subject, was previously seen in the various iterations of the TV series of Fargo.

For an hour or so it is a funny film. A late thirties couple, she heavily pregnant, are booted from their flat and land themselves back with his parents in what seems to be, if not luxurious, very comfortable accommodation. The young couple cant afford a place of their own. He's just lost his job as well. (How the  father worked to buy the house is the subject of one bitter exchange between father and son. "It's not like that anymore"!) The parents feel very put upon and quite unwelcoming and even plot to get rid of the 'kids'. That's foiled by one very funny plot development....and there's one genuinely brilliant bit of humour involving sex and a leather jacket.

Then, on their wedding anniversary night, the parents decide they aren't going to take it anymore and the film goes down a very dark and violent path. Not quite as funny.... 

The crowd loved this debut feature out of the west. It played in Tribeca and you can read what attracted the international attention here. It has a distributor and with a bit of luck it should be more widely seen.