Director Zoe Pepper Turns Millennial Housing Anxiety Into Dark-Comedy Gold With Birthright

There are few things more uniquely millennial than moving back in with your parents as an adult, and Australian writer-director Zoe Pepper saw it happening around her constantly—friends returning home “temporarily”, only to find themselves stuck in cycles of emotional regression and conflict.

That observation eventually became Birthright, Pepper’s sharp and increasingly unhinged feature debut: a dark comedy following Cory and his pregnant wife Jasmine after they’re forced to move back in with his Baby Boomer parents amid a housing crisis. What begins as reluctant cohabitation quickly spirals into resentment, paranoia, and generational warfare.

“I didn’t set out to make a housing crisis story,” Pepper tells Urban List.

“It was more just watching friends of mine find themselves in this situation where they were having to move back in with their parents, and kind of hating it internally in that way where they were regressing to their teenage selves.”

“The stays were intended to be short and then extend out, and I became really curious about the power dynamic underneath one roof, with these two generations—the parents and the kids—neither of them finding it a particularly ideal situation to be in.”

As Pepper developed the script, the story naturally expanded beyond one family dynamic into something much broader: a portrait of a generation grappling with shrinking opportunities, rising living costs, and the increasingly fragile idea of stability. The film taps directly into the growing divide between those who entered adulthood at a time when home ownership felt attainable, and those navigating a version of Australia, where that promise feels increasingly out of reach.

Despite those weightier themes, Birthright never loses its sense of humour. The film swings between satire, discomfort, absurdity and genuine tension—something Pepper says has long felt instinctive to her creative voice.

“It’s just my go-to tone, really,” she says. “I’ve got a bit of an allergy to anything that’s too earnest.”

“I like approaching topics that have something to say, but wrapping them up in satire and comedy so they still feel fun and accessible. It should still be an enjoyable ride for the audience.”

That balancing act gives the film its uneasy edge. One moment feels painfully relatable, the next completely surreal, with Pepper deliberately pushing emotional situations until they become almost absurd. Rather than treating the housing crisis with straight realism, Birthright leans into the anxiety, shame and paranoia that can quietly build when adulthood stops looking the way you imagined it would.

Shot in Perth, the film unfolds almost entirely inside a sprawling family home surrounded by dense gardens and disconnected from the outside world. Pepper says the setting became crucial in creating the film’s increasingly claustrophobic atmosphere.

“I really wanted it to take on an allegorical quality,” she explains.

“Finding somewhere with these big wraparound gardens where you’re not aware of the presence of any neighbours.”

That physical isolation allows the story to gradually detach from strict realism and instead operate on emotional logic, where childhood expectations, identity and buried resentment begin driving the characters more than practicality itself.

“The isolation lets that emotional logic play out and allows these characters to descend into their own kind of madness on the way to trying to get what they want.”

That emotional intensity placed huge demands on the cast, particularly as the story becomes increasingly volatile. Pepper says finding performers willing to fully surrender to both the absurdity and emotional stakes of the script became essential during casting.

Leading the cast are Travis Jeffery (Kingdom Of The Planet Of The Apes, Top End Wedding) and Maria Angelico (The Newsreader, Strife) as Cory and Jasmine, alongside screen veterans Michael Hurst and Linda Cropper as Cory’s increasingly unsettled parents.

And while Birthright taps directly into anxieties many younger Australians will instantly recognise, Pepper says she never wanted the film to reduce its characters—or either generation—to heroes or villains.

“By design, your sympathies and empathy keep shifting across the course of the film,” she explains.

“No one character is entirely good or bad. There’s a lot of moral complexity and moral greyness in their behaviour.”

Dark, biting and deeply recognisable, the film captures a version of modern adulthood many Australians know all too well—where dependence, resentment and survival begin to blur together. Somehow, it also manages to be wickedly funny while doing it.

Birthright hits cinemas nationally from Thursday 21 May.

Image credit: Birthright | Supplied