The boomer vs millennial war that spectacularly erupts in West Australian playwright-turned-filmmaker Zoe Pepper’s marvellously maniacal debut feature, Birthright, burns incandescently bright.
One of the sharpest Australian films in recent memory, it stars Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes actor Travis Jeffery and Maria Angelico from Strife and The Newsreader as a stressed-out couple, Cory and Jasmine. She’s heavily pregnant, he’s just been let go from a casual contract, and they’ve been evicted from their ridiculously high-rent apartment.
With no money coming in and zero savings in the bank, they’re forced to shove everything they own (minus the vacuum that won’t fit) into the back of their car. Metaphorically crawling on their hands and knees, they head to Cory’s tut-tutting parents, Richard and Lyn (Michael Hurst and Linda Cropper), where sympathy is in short supply.
The older couple are in the middle of redecorating their lush suburban mansion with its expansive, leafy garden, you see. ‘It’s really not a good time.’
Except Birthright’s arrival in cinemas does come at an exceedingly good time.
Birthright: the Australian Dream
Debuting at last year’s Tribeca Film Festival in New York City, Birthright made its way towards the Sydney Film Festival and MIFF. As often happens with local films that debut on the festival circuit, it then vanished for a stretch.
But the looooong wait for its local release has, uncannily, pegged the savage housing crisis satire to a moment of political upheaval. Sort of.
First, a few stats from the Domain First Home Buyer Report released in February 2026:
- Entry house prices have increased by 68% for houses nationally over the previous five years alone, and by 30% for units.
- Perth, Darwin, Brisbane and Adelaide each exceeded 20% growth during that period. In Sydney, an entry-priced house exceeds $1 million.
- Inflation has increased by 23% over the same period, affecting mortgage repayments, (there have been three interest rate hikes since February alone).
- Wages, if you’re lucky enough to be salaried, have only increased by 21% (Many freelance workers like this writer have had almost no pay rise in over a decade).
So there was much ballyhoo, in the lead-up to treasurer Jim Chalmers’ freshly handed down budget. It was meant to be a boon for younger Australians doing it tough, particularly those struggling to get their first foot on the unreachable property ladder.
A tanking curve
SPOILERS: That didn’t happen.
Sure, there’s been some long-overdue tinkering at the margins on capital gains tax and negative gearing, to readdress an imbalance inflamed by former Prime Minister John Howard. One that unfairly advantaged those with cold hard cash and existing property portfolios.
But existing investments have been grandfathered. So there’s no guarantee property investors will offload a significant amount of these properties, nor at an affordable price for new buyers. Meanwhile, the cost of living crisis spirals, with a desultory $250 tax relief offered from *checks notes* 2028 that’s unlikely to cover one week’s groceries by then.
Meanwhile, 160,000 people will lose NDIS support. Renters and those experiencing homelessness get jack shit. Again. There’s no new money to build affordable housing, and zip for social support funds, including Jobseeker, Youth Allowance and the pension.
It’s worth noting that 65% of elected politicians own at least two properties, so they’re unlikely to cut their noses off to soothe our spite. Of which there is a lot, in a diabolical time when unjust wars rage and many of us are struggling to keep our heads above water, let alone achieve the long-lost Australian Dream of a quarter acre to call our own.
Birthright: twisting the garden shears
Birthright sticks the garden shears deep into this sore wound. Sure, Richard and Lyn are retirees who (probably) worked hard all their lives and value their peace, quiet and abundant space.
They also lived at a lucky time when, even if interest rates did soar to 17%, the price of a new home was still eminently achievable for the average salary. Back when housing was for people, not portfolios.
With only a little heightening, a la the Betoota Advocate, Hurst and Cropper are magnificently mean-spirited as the sort of closed-door boomers who steadfastly refuse to acknowledge the world has changed. Who bark at their children’s perceived failings, begging for a handout. This, even though the game is now stacked against millennials, as Cory wails. ‘I did everything right … it doesn’t fucking work.’
Birthright: entitlement
The latter aren’t let off the hook entirely. Writer-director Pepper also plays up a certain brand of youthful entitlement. Cory gets increasingly territorial about a house he sees as his, yes, birthright, going so far as to dig up the backyard pool his parents had filled in to save on maintenance.
In an Oedipal mess, he also forcibly shoves Jas into his parents’ bed in the middle of the night because the bunk in his childhood room is too uncomfortable for her baby bump. As the sniping intensifies over begrudged family dinners, Cory also begins to suspect Jas is only with him for his parents’ money.
Meanwhile, Jas retrieves Lyn’s perfect condition designer shirt from the bins and begins to daub her makeup on like the Joker as this pressure cooks.
A nail-bitingly tense chamber piece, for all Pepper’s pointed dark humour, Birthright is played almost like a horror movie. Cory and his dad begin to spar physically as well as psychologically, inflamed by their tussling over a tasselled, deep red leather jacket.
This sense of danger is expertly exacerbated by James Peter Brown’s simmering score and cinematographer Michael McDermott’s glacially tracking camera, which stalks polished floorboard halls like it’s The Shining.
Heightened it may be, but Birthright alights on a very painful truth as the intergenerational battle over the right to secure housing rages on.
