Tony Ayres is a highly admired writer and director, whose work as ‘showrunner’ on programs such as ‘The Slap’ (2011), adapted from the novel by Christos Tsiolkas, ‘Bogan Pride’ (2008) starring Rebel Wilson, ‘Nowhere Boys’ (2014) and ‘Glitch’ (2015), directed by fellow VCA alumnus Emma Freeman, have put Ayres at the centre of the Australian screen industry and made him one its most influential leaders. He is a founding partner of Matchbox Pictures.
Spooky Files is a fun, spooky, adventure-filled series that tackles kids' relationships with fear - with buckets of scares and truckloads of laughs along the way.
Release Date: 2023-10-23
Department: Production
Job: Executive Producer
Episode Count: 10
Join award-winning comedian and professional lesbian Zoe Coombs Marr, as we wipe away the straightwashing and reveal the untold and frankly fascinating Queer history of Australia.
Release Date: 2023-02-28
Episode Count: 3
Vote Count: 1
Inspired by true events, the story of everyday Australians at the front line of the devastating fires of the 2019-2020 Australian summer.
Release Date: 2021-09-26
Department: Production
Job: Executive Producer
Episode Count: 6
Vote Count: 11
When family man Nick Brewer is abducted in a crime with a sinister online twist, those closest to him race to uncover who is behind it and why.
Release Date: 2021-08-25
Department: Production
Job: Executive Producer
Episode Count: 8
Vote Count: 364
Four strangers — a flight attendant escaping a suburban cult, an Afghan refugee fleeing persecution, a young Australian father escaping a dead-end job, and a bureaucrat caught up in a national scandal — are stuck in an immigration detention center in the Australian desert. Inspired by true events.
Release Date: 2020-03-01
Department: Production
Job: Executive Producer
Episode Count: 6
Vote Count: 111
They say art is the mark of a civilised society, but what do Australians really think about it? Each week, a cross-section of Australians will become art critics as they delve deeper into some of the most renowned works in the country.
Release Date: 2018-06-28
Department: Writing
Job: Idea
Episode Count: 9
A gripping psychological mystery told from the shifting perspective of six characters following a complicated chain of events triggered when a child is taken and relationships are thrown into crisis.
Release Date: 2017-04-13
Department: Production
Job: Executive Producer
Episode Count: 6
Vote Count: 16
Melbourne 1996. The Golden Age of Australian swimming is beginning and a scholarship to an exclusive boys school brings 16-year-old Danny Kelly one step closer to his ultimate goal - winning Olympic gold. Initially, Danny struggles to find his place in the prestigious social circles of the private boys school. However under the charge of highly regarded coach Frank Torma and a friendship/rivalry with teammate Martin Taylor, Danny is soon on track to become Australia’s youngest swimming champion, the unstoppable 'Barracuda'.
Release Date: 2016-07-10
Department: Production
Job: Producer
Episode Count: 4
Vote Count: 17
Two complete strangers, Lola and Chelsea, intervene in a fatal carjacking while waiting at a suburban bus stop, and are subsequently thrust into a chase from authorities across Australia with a vehicle filled with cash. The strangers must rely solely on each other while on the run.
Release Date: 2016-02-09
Department: Production
Job: Executive Producer
Episode Count: 18
Vote Count: 70
A year after the boys crossed dimensions, discovered magic and battled the restoring demon, they are back home in Bremin and are struggling with everyday teenage life. Felix has high hopes for the four heroes. He wants them to push the limits of their magical ability, working as a team to become masters of the arcane. But although he's unwilling to admit it, the boys have grown apart. The boys, once in perfect magical and elemental alignment, are a tangle of rivalry and distrust. On the verge of separating, the Nowhere Boys are drawn together for one last spell when Felix discovers a magically sealed 'Book of Shadows'. Unwittingly this releases a powerful force of chaos, and the gang is reluctantly drawn into a showdown that threatens their world and all they love...
Release Date: 2016-01-01
Department: Production
Job: Executive Producer
Vote Count: 50
Young, charismatic, and hardworking, Sparra Farrell seems to be sailing into a happy, respectable life. He has a solid job and an adorable fiancée named Paula, and already owns a modest house in the country outside Melbourne. The only odd thing is that Sparra says precious little about his past — but that past is about to catch up with him, and wrest control of his present.
Release Date: 2015-09-24
Department: Directing
Job: Director
Vote Count: 27
A police officer and a doctor face an emotionally charged mystery when seven local residents inexplicably return from the dead in peak physical form.
Release Date: 2015-07-09
Department: Production
Job: Executive Producer
Episode Count: 12
Vote Count: 342
Hector and his wife Aisha plan a party for family and friends, but the day doesn't turn out as they expected when Hector's hot-headed cousin Harry slaps a misbehaving child. The party ends abruptly with the child's parents threatening legal action, and a chain of events is ignited that will uncover secrets, challenge core values, and leave the party guests and hosts forever changed.
Release Date: 2015-02-12
Department: Production
Job: Executive Producer
Episode Count: 8
Vote Count: 30
The year is 1988. It is 35 years after the events of Fred Schepisi’s classic film, The Devil’s Playground. Tom Allen, now in his 40s and recently widowed, is a respected Sydney psychiatrist and father of two children. A practicing Catholic, Tom accepts an offer by the Bishop of Sydney to become a counselor of priests. During these sessions, he will uncover a scandal and become embroiled in the Church’s attempts to cover it up. Tom’s quest for justice will push him to his limits, and reveal a side of Church power and official corruption he could never have imagined.
Release Date: 2014-09-09
Department: Production
Job: Executive Producer
Episode Count: 6
Vote Count: 9
Ted McCabe, a retired cop, and Lennie Cahill a retired crim, get together to solve crimes, unravel scams and make some cash, while avoiding the wrath of the police and the underworld.
Release Date: 2014-05-23
Department: Production
Job: Executive Producer
Episode Count: 8
Vote Count: 9
Four teenage boys get lost in the forest and discover, when they return home, that they are in an alternate world identical to theirs except for one startling difference - they were never born.
Release Date: 2013-11-07
Department: Production
Job: Producer
Episode Count: 13
Vote Count: 66
Seventeen talented Australian directors from diverse artistic disciplines each create a chapter of the hauntingly beautiful novel by multi award-winning author Tim Winton. The linking and overlapping stories explore the extraordinary turning points in ordinary people’s lives in a stunning portrait of a small coastal community. As characters face second thoughts and regret, relationships irretrievably alter, resolves are made or broken, and lives change direction forever.
Release Date: 2013-09-25
Department: Directing
Job: Director
Vote Count: 29
Six ambitious young Aussie actors embark on one of the toughest journeys of their lives with a clear challenge in mind - to score a TV role in Hollywood. This original documentary series follows the actors as they compete for roles during the frenzied and chaotic US TV pilot season. The series captures all their excitement, frustrations, struggles, fears and tears as they compete with the world’s best and try to navigate the travails of the entertainment industry in LA.
Release Date: 2013-01-08
Department: Production
Job: Executive Producer
Episode Count: 6
Set among the turquoise waters and lethal wildlife of Australia’s Far North Queensland and the Torres Strait, The Straits is an exotic, darkly humorous crime drama. The Montebellos are not your average Australian family. Modern day smugglers, their family business is transporting drugs into Australia and guns and exotic wildlife out, making use of ties of blood and loyalty in the Torres Strait Islands.
Release Date: 2012-02-02
Department: Production
Job: Executive Producer
Episode Count: 10
Vote Count: 3
When a man slaps a 4-year-old boy, the incident results in an intense court case.
Release Date: 2011-10-06
Department: Production
Job: Producer
Episode Count: 8
Vote Count: 30
The advocate for a young Iranian refugee held in detention. Amir Ali claims to be an Iranian student persecuted by the government but the Department of Immigration dispute his identity. When Julia meets Amir, he is severely depressed and close to deportation. Julia throws herself obsessively into Amir's case, causing friction between Julia and her husband, Peter. Julia eventually frees Amir and the young Iranian man moves in with Peter and Julia. As Julia helps Amir adjust to ordinary life, she finds herself increasingly attracted to this handsome, damaged young man. But she also starts to see the subtle cracks in Amir's story. Is he really who he claims he is? Or does he have a darker, more dangerous history?
Release Date: 2009-04-11
Department: Directing
Job: Director
Vote Count: 5
Tom, now in his 40s, begins to write the memoirs of his 1960s childhood, as the little boy whose mother Rose was a glamorous Shanghai nightclub singer. When Rose meets Aussie sailor Bill, they are quickly married, and she packs up Tom and his older sister May to head for Melbourne. The marriage just as quickly breaks up and Rose moves with the kids to Sydney. After a succession of male friends and little success, in 1971 Rose moves back to Melbourne, in an uncomfortable arrangement living again with Bill – and his mother. With Bill called away to sea, Rose takes up with young Chinese cook Joe, but despair and conflicts over May's relationship with Joe tear the family further apart. Little Tom is deeply hurt, but May's ongoing conflict with her mother takes a respite when Rose tells her daughter about her traumatic teenage years.
Release Date: 2007-02-09
Department: Directing
Job: Director
Vote Count: 8
After a near death experience, five Boys, all devoted AC/DC fans, make a pact to bury their best friend next to the grave of Bon Scott. 12 years later, having gone their different ways, they come together to fulfill the promise.
Release Date: 2004-05-20
Department: Writing
Job: Script Editor
Vote Count: 4
Friends and family gather around the death bed of Gavin, where they assist in the dying man's suicide. But though Gavin's pain has been laid to rest, the grief felt by everyone there has only begun, and Walking on Water compassionately follows the attempts of Gavin's closest friends Anna and Charlie to recover from their loss.
Release Date: 2002-09-26
Department: Directing
Job: Director
Vote Count: 8
A search for love, meaning and bathroom solitude. Danny goes through a series of shared housing experiences in a succession of cities on the east coast of Australia. Together these vignettes form a narrative that is surprisingly reflective.
Release Date: 2001-08-30
Department: Writing
Job: Script Editor
Vote Count: 147
A boy climbs an unsteady path to adulthood under difficult circumstances in this drama from Australia. Shaun (Kane McNay) is a teenager growing up in a run-down suburb of Melbourne. His father Sam (Brett Swain) is in prison, while his mother Jenny (Nell Feeney) is too lost in her problems with alcohol to provide much guidance for her children. Left to his own devices, Shaun commits petty theft, smokes pot, and deals drugs to his friends as they hang out at the nearby shopping mall. Shaun seems unable to reach out to anyone, not even his girlfriend (Lauren Hawker) or Darren (Brett Tucker), a social worker eager to help him. When his father is released from prison and brings his mistress to the "Welcome Home" party Jenny throws for him, Shaun comes to realize that if he is ever to resolve his problems, he will have to do it without the help of his family. Mallboy marked the feature film debut for writer/director Vincent Giarrusso.
Release Date: 2001-03-13
Department: Writing
Job: Script Editor
Vote Count: 4
For the first time in 15 years, all four siblings in a family show up to care for their dying mother, who is only given a couple of weeks to live. One comes from America with her two children. A divorced sister also comes with her child and sneaks off regularly to meet a mystery man who may be her ex-husband. The third & youngest daughter is an unmarried nurse aware of her ticking biological clock. The only son chases after his grumpy father who seems to not care a whit about his wife's circumstances. The four are also faced my their mother's dreams to accomplish a few things before she dies - to visit a beach she had visited in the past, to see her youngest married, and to visit Paris. She also wants to be embalmed and be honored with a 21 gun salute. Thus the whole group has to set off in the quest to fulfill their mother's wishes.
Release Date: 1999-10-28
Department: Writing
Job: Script Editor
Vote Count: 2
Based on photographer William Yang's one man stage show, "Sadness" chronicles two diverging narratives through the use of slide photography, oral history and stylised recreation. One story follows Yang's pilgrimage into the heart of the North Queensland sugar cane fields as he investigates the murder of his uncle Fang Yuen. The other is a series of moving portraits of the many friends and lovers Yang has lost to AIDS. Director Tony Ayres skillfully weaves these two separate stories together creating a powerful testament to family, friends, love and loss. Cinematography by Tristan Milani. Narrated by William Yang.
Release Date: 1999-06-23
Department: Directing
Job: Director
Vote Count: 1
The Violent Earth is a 1998 French-Australian mini series set in New Caledonia from 1888 to 1977.
Release Date: 1998-11-04
Department: Writing
Job: Writer
Episode Count: 3
An older woman complains about the excessive traffic in a public men's room across the street.
Release Date: 1998-10-01
Department: Directing
Job: Director
Vote Count: 3
The Violent Earth is a 1998 French-Australian mini series set in New Caledonia from 1888 to 1977.
Release Date: 1998-09-01
Department: Writing
Job: Writer
Vote Count: 1
Aussie boys of Asian descent candidly discuss their status as a "minority within a minority".
Release Date: 1998-06-20
Department: Directing
Job: Director
Character: Narrator / Self (archival footage)
Vote Count: 2
A filmmaker makes a documentary about a photographer. David Edwards has been taking photographs of naked men for the past 11 years. But in this case, who is the voyeur and who is the exhibitionist? An examination of the nature of looking.
Release Date: 1997-03-22
Department: Directing
Job: Director
Vote Count: 1
Justin, a young gay man is on a break from film school, struggling to come to terms with his father’s violent opposition to his sexual orientation.
Release Date: 1985-10-31
Department: Directing
Job: Director