Airdate: Under Cover

Next Monday Margot Robbie narrates Under Cover, a documentary on the rise of women over 50 experiencing homelessness in Australia.

The film by Sue Thomson (The Coming Back Out Ball) screened at the 2022 Melb International Film Festival.

Narrated by Margot Robbie and sharing the lives of an eclectic group of women throughout Australia, Under Cover shines a light on a devastating reality – women over 50 being the fastest growing cohort experiencing homelessness in Australia. These moving but optimistic portraits reveal the struggles these women face, and lay bare the flaws in our society, as well as our economic fragility in the modern world.

Under Cover follows ten vulnerable women, as well as three people working to keep older women like them from becoming homeless. For these women, life hasn’t panned out the way they expected. They’ve lived in nice houses, worked good jobs, some educated their children and then suddenly… life unravelled and through no fault of their own they found themselves unable to pay their rent or mortgage.

The women featured in Under Cover, are all over 50, and are a diverse group from varied backgrounds – wealthy, poor, middle class, working, unemployed, migrant and Indigenous. Faced with the hardships of housing stress and ageing, these women are seeking to find a home to call their own, for the next chapter of their lives.

They are complex and compelling stories that reflect the years of living ordinary lives, until a catastrophe or a series of circumstances knocked them off their feet. No matter how bad life gets, the stories these women share are balanced with resolute determination, a dry sense of humour and the eternal optimism that there is hope for them yet.

Production Credit: b00mdone Productions

8.30pm Monday 16 January on ABC.