Australia has a habit of treating ageing as something taboo, to segregate away. Careless, directed by award-winning filmmaker Sue Thomson, refuses that framing.
The film premiered at the 2025 Melbourne International Film Festival where it won the Audience Award. It lands with humour, anger and something more tender; a reminder that ageing is not a future abstraction. It is all of us, sooner than we think.
Thomson builds the documentary around her mother, Margaret, who is 89, sharp, funny and increasingly wary of the institutional landscape waiting at the end of the road.
The camera never turns her into a symbol. She’s a person who wants to live at home and stay part of her neighbourhood. Her daughter asks questions during sections of the film, alongside other families trying to keep their parents safe, connected, and human.
Careless follows several older Australians determined to age in place. Some are coping. Some are lonely. Others have lost partners and feel the world shrinking around them.
Thomson keeps these strands tight and personal. She avoids the trap of a broad ‘issue’ documentary. The people come first. The policy critique emerges from their days, not the other way around.
Still, when the system appears, it is absurd. One sequence shows a character navigating MyAgedCare. Thomson stretches the single phone call across a full morning. The call continues as she leaves the house, drives, and shops.
A spritely Benny Hill-style score underlines the comic horror. It is funny. It is also recognisable to anyone who has tried to help an older parent through the maze of aged-care bureaucracy.
A welcome surprise is the trio of schoolchildren who deliver ‘show and tell’ segments explaining aged care and serve as narrators. They’re bright, blunt and entirely unbothered by adult euphemisms.
It’s more than a gimmick. Thomson uses them to argue that the next generation needs to learn about ageing and death early, not so they fear it, but so they can meet it with empathy. The contrast between these kids and our current political class is painful.
The film’s history sits just below the surface. Thomson doesn’t lecture, but the documentary makes clear that the system’s failures are bipartisan. The Keating-era reforms, Howard’s expansion of private markets, and later governments under Rudd, Gillard, Morrison, and Albanese all amplified a model that treats older people as a commodity, rather than a part of the community. Journalist Rick Morton and other experts appear to give context and are used well.
Careless blends observational footage, interviews, and stylised sequences. Thomson inserts archival photos of her subjects as young people: sunburnt on beaches, laughing in swimsuits, dancing at parties.
These images hit harder than any statistic. They close the empathy gap that often swallows aged-care conversations. It’s hard to ‘other’ someone when you’ve just seen them at twenty.
The film also includes stories from CALD communities, including Italian families, and from First Nations elders, whose experiences with ageing carry a different cultural weight. These moments broaden the documentary and prevent it from defaulting to a single cultural lens.
The inclusion of dementia stories is also handled with care; honest but not voyeuristic. At around 90 minutes, the pacing works. The humour keeps the film buoyant. The grief is real but never punishing.
If anything is missing, it’s an international comparison. Countries like Denmark, Japan and the Netherlands have home-based ageing models that outperform ours. A short sequence on that would have strengthened the film’s argument. But it’s a minor point in a documentary that already carries significant weight.
There’s a clear message: older Australians want independence, choice, connection, and the ability to age in place. They are not getting it. Yet Thomson doesn’t fall into despair. She shows families, neighbours and care navigators who do get it right. Careless understands the power of local community and intergenerational connection: dancing, cooking, learning and living together is the antidote to isolation.
Careless opens in select cinemas nationally on 4 December 2025.
Website: https://backlot-films.webflow.io/films/careless and https://www.carelessfilm.com/
Socials: https://www.instagram.com/thebacklotfilms/
Photo credits Ben Bryan. Watch the trailer here:
Film details:
Title: Careless
Director: Sue Thomson
Cast: Told through the stories of older Australians
Country of Origin: Australia
Rating: PG
Duration: 88 mins
