The challenges that younger people experience buying a house have played out on the big screen in a feature film that pulls the curtain back on intergenerational wealth and the national housing crisis.
Birthright, directed by award-winning Australian writer and director Zoe Pepper, is a satire that busts open some of the conflicts that usually play out behind closed doors in family homes across the nation.
The movie exposes a dark underbelly as a growing number of younger generations throw up their hands in despair, unable to get into the property market.
The median house value in Canberra currently sits at $898,242, according to data from the National Australia Bank.
Featuring a newly evicted pregnant millennial jobless couple forced to move in with unsympathetic and distrustful Boomer parents who remain dubious about the young couple's intentions, the movie exposes the family tensions created by the nation's housing affordability crisis.
In the movie, Boomer father Richard declares to his 30-year-old son that he had done it tough, taking $10,000 gifted to him by his father to purchase the family home, now his pride and joy.
Richard then points out to his son, Corey, that when he did the same and gifted him $10,000, Corey made the unwise decision to use the money to travel overseas and get an arts degree.
But as Corey and his pregnant wife extend their stay, the parents start to worry that their underwhelming son who had made bad choices along the way might never leave the family home.
As both couples grow paranoid about the threat posed by the other generation, their relationships become increasingly unhinged.
The movie raises questions about entitlement that younger generations feel towards their parents and what happens when adult children move home and live under their parents' roof when their lives don't quite work out as planned.
It also unpacks the mammoth intergenerational wealth transfer underway in Australia as Baby Boomers pass on an estimated $3.5 trillion in assets to the next generation through inheritance by 2050.
Of course, it's not straightforward, with unhappy adult kids contesting some of the largest intergenerational wealth transfer ever seen in Australia in the courts.
Some say the housing crisis has created a generation waiting for their parents to die so they can inherit the family home and finally get into the property market.
Ms Pepper was inspired to tell the tale after watching friends move in with their parents during the pandemic.
Moved by the dwindling rates of home ownership, the director aimed to highlight the problem by exposing the concept of entitlement among young people hoping to inherit the family home.
Ms Pepper said Birthright is about the collapse of her generation's worldview.
The story drills down into all of her fears of failing, of turning 40 and not having built the life that she dreamed she would have.
"And while it sounds dramatic, it's also kind of funny because these are issues that are reshaping the fabric of our society, but they're also middle-class problems that reflect a level of privilege that is ripe for satire," Ms Pepper said.
"I'm a millennial with Baby Boomer parents.
"I'm from a generation that was raised on the beliefs of the Baby Boomer generation that hard work will be rewarded with all the trimmings of a middle-class life - owning a big house, having a well-paid job.
"But the recipe that all but guaranteed this middle-class success for Baby Boomers does not stack up today.
"The rules have radically changed."
In cinemas now, Birthright had its world premiere at the 2025 Tribeca Film Festival in New York and was also runner-up for the audience award for best Australian narrative feature at the Sydney Film Festival last year.
The movie was produced by Madman Entertainment and will be available on home entertainment
