Upcoming Adelaide-shot drama A Month of Sundays revolves around the real estate industry, through the story of a shonky broker (Anthony LaPaglia) who is inspired to change his ways. Meanwhile a young married couple, desperate to crack the housing market, are blocked out by bigger spenders.

It’s familiar territory for anyone who has recently tried to buy a house: in recent years, property and home ownership have emerged as particularly hot topics in the media. The Australian dream – the desire to own a home, pocket a reliable income and experience a decent retirement – has also been extensively explored in Australian films, from a range of interesting perspectives. Here are 10 of the best.

The Castle (1997)

Director Rob Sitch’s beloved story of a heart-of-gold family who live at 3 Highview Crescent is an ode to appreciating what you have – and being prepared to fight for it.

The Kerrigan family don’t exactly reveal great understanding of property appreciation, taking pride that their airport-over-the-back-fence abode is “worth almost as much today as when we bought it”.

But perhaps patriarch Darryl (Michael Caton) is on to something with his imperturbable force field of optimism. The suffer-in-ya-jocks straight-shooter has a sort of blue collar zen, which allows him to view things such as ugly power lines with almost spiritual reverie – “a reminder of man’s ability to generate electricity”.

The Killing of Angel Street (1981)

The Killing of Angel Street is one of two films (the other is Phillip Noyce’s Heatwave) inspired by the mysterious real-life disappearance of Juanita Nielsen, a community activist who fought mass development in Sydney. Like The Castle, this cracker political thriller from 1981 is less about obtaining a property than fighting to keep it.

Director Donald Crombie piles on the tension, aided by a top-notch cast (including Elizabeth Alexander and John Hargreaves) and an expose-like screenplay that examines the cost, human and otherwise, of big business getting in bed with politicians.

Welcome to Woop Woop (1997)

Writer/director Stephan Elliott’s gloriously kitschy hell-on-earth comedy about yokels who run their own society in the middle of nowhere and by their own rules, is a bizarre paean to the virtues of living off-road. The town’s tyrannical ringleader Daddy-O (an uproariously entertaining Rod Taylor) smokes Marlboros and eats schnitzels while the others are confined to a diet of pineapple chunks and cheap tobacco.

Stranded American criminal Teddy (Johnathon Schaech) revolts, leading to a terrific chest-beating monologue from Daddy-O about being proud of what you have. Welcome to Woop Woop is “too fucking dry, too fucking hot, too many bloody flies but it’s ours”, he hollers. “You might not think that’s much, but it’s fair dinkum.”

Bitter Springs (1950)

The Castle may be the funniest Australian film about a property dispute, but Bitter Springs is probably the best.

Chips Rafferty, in a role substantially meatier than most in his oeuvre, plays stockman Wally King, who buys real estate for his family in central Australia in 1900. But traditional owners of the land live in the area, leading to an escalating conflict between Rafferty’s crew and the Indigenous people.

Bitter Springs explores land rights issues in a frank and powerful way. The pig-headed King eventually comes to understand that a piece of paper declaring he owns land means nothing to people who have inhabited that space for thousands of years. And, importantly, that while it may give him a legal right to be be there, it does not necessarily grant him a moral one.

Babe: Pig in the City (1998)

You may remember scenes so dark they felt like a David Lynch remake of The Adventures of Milo and Otis. The premise of George Miller’s under-rated Babe sequel – the Citizen Kane of talking animal movies – concerns an epic battle for a couple to retain their home and assets.

Having returned to Hoggett Farm a hero, the adorable titular pork chop is sent on a mission to raise enough money to save it after two men from the bank “with pale faces and soulless eyes” arrive bearing bad news.

The King is Dead! (2012)

Young married couple Max (Dan Wyllie) and Therese (Bojana Novakovic) realise their dream of owning a house, only to discover the world’s worst neighbours are on the other side of the fence. The police can’t control a foul array of grubby, singlet-clad, drug-addled, party-round-the-clock bogans, so the pair take matters into their own hands.

The King is Dead! is one of several expectation-subverting curios from veteran writer/director Rolf de Heer, who lampoons various types of privilege and memorably captures a distinctly middle class kind of horror. Character actor Gary Waddell’s performance as King, a charismatic but extremely volatile airhead, is insanely good.

They’re a Weird Mob (1966)

Many stories have been written and filmed over the years about migrants coming to terms with life down under. British director Michael Powell established the genre as fertile, beer-infused ground in his endearing 1966 comedy, adapting a bestselling novel of the same name.

Nino (Walter Chiari) is a pleasant-natured Italian migrant who starts work as a labourer and pursues his dream of getting married and owning land. A documentary-esque narrator explains various kinds of Australianisms. When we see footage of women in swimsuits, he observes: “These they call sheilas, or bewt sorts.”

My Brilliant Career (1979)

The ability to live, love and work independently are themes core to director Gillian Armstrong’s character study of a shamelessly egotistical, outside-the-box free spirit who dreams of something greater than a quiet provincial life.

In a star-making turn, Judy Davis plays Sybylla Melvyn, the instigator of a powerful exploration of classism, sexism and old-school Australian values.

The film launched more than one brilliant career: Armstrong smashed the glass ceiling to become the first woman to direct an Australian feature film in almost 50 years.

Three Dollars (2005)

The take-home message underpinning director Robert Connolly’s adaptation of Elliot Perlman’s book is a persuasive one: that many seemingly well-off families are only a few paycheques away from the poverty line.

In this portrait of a compassionate scientist’s violent transition into a life of homelessness, Eddie (David Wenham) informs us he and his wife have “become expert at living on the ever-shrinking margin between the mortgage and our combined incomes”. The last act is at times a little unconvincing, but the film has a big-hearted sense of humanity that’s hard to shake.

The Finished People (2003)

Perhaps the Australian dream can be partly defined by stories of those for whom it is manifestly out of reach. This tiny budget indie from director Khoa Do, 2005’s Young Australian of the Year, follows three homeless youth living on the streets of Cabramatta.

Virtually everything about The Finished People is rough, from its ostracised Struggle Street characters to scuzzy low-fi production values. But Do’s film is shockingly authentic drama, with a street-side sense of urgency as striking now as it was when it was first released.

Join us in Melbourne for our gala screening of A Month of Sundays on 27 April at Cinema Nova in Carlton, hosted by Luke Buckmaster with special guests Steve Biddulph and Matthew Saville. A Month of Sundays is in Australia cinemas from 28 April