Return Home

Join us for a post-screening Q&A with Ray Argall AM and Mandy Walker AM ASC ACS, moderated by film critic Digby Houghton.

Noel McKenzie (Dennis Coard), a successful but unhappily divorced insurance broker, travels to Suburban Adelaide to stay with his brother Steve (Frankie J. Holden). While Steve believes he can keep making ends meet operating a garage with his boisterous young employee Gary (a charismatic Ben Mendelsohn), his pragmatic wife Judy (Mickey Camilleri) is concerned about the precarity of their situation. An intimate and unaffected portrait of working-class life, Return Home is among the greatest Australian films of its era.

Ray Argall AM
A graduate of the Australian Film Television and Radio School, Ray has enjoyed a colourful and productive presence in filmmaking spanning more than four decades, working as a director, producer, DOP, editor and writer on features, short dramas and documentaries. He established a reputation as one of Australia's most innovative cinematographers through his work on features such as Wrong World, The Prisoner of St. Petersburg and Look Both Ways. In 2016, Ray launched Piccolo Films, a business restoring archival films, starting with his own back catalogue, and expanding to the work of other filmmakers.

Mandy Walker AM ASC ACS
Starting her film career as a runner at age 18, Mandy Walker shot Return Home, her first film as director of photography at just 25. Since then, her skills have been in great demand by directors all over the world. She has received international recognition, including a nomination for an Academy Award for her work on Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis (2022). In 2025 she became the first woman to be elected president of the American Society of Cinematographers.

About Unknown Pleasures
Unknown Pleasures is a screening series featuring the best of Australian independent cinema, both classic and contemporary, with filmmaker Q&As.