Social Services
Format: Feature Film (100–110 mins)
Genre: Drama / Sports / Community Redemption / Social Realism
Setting: A struggling regional town in Northern NSW — public housing blocks, dusty footy ovals, Centrelink offices, PCYC courts, and tense households on the fringe
Tone: Raw, unsentimental, darkly funny, emotionally grounded — a blend of The Merger, Samson & Delilah, and A Prophet (If Ted Lasso got jumped in a carpark and woke up in a Warwick Thornton film)
Logline: A disgraced former soccer star, now limping through life on a prosthetic leg, is given one last shot at redemption: coach a volatile youth soccer team made up of refugee and Indigenous teens. As the lines between punishment and purpose blur, he and the team must confront violence, distrust, and the broken institutions meant to help them — finding, in each other, a reason to fight again.
Synopsis
John LaRocca was supposed to be a star — an under-21 national team defender with a Premier League contract in sight. Then a brutal on-field injury shattered his leg, his career, and everything tethered to it. Now limping through life with a prosthetic and a bad attitude, he’s broke, addicted to painkillers, and one strike away from losing his welfare payments for good.
When Centrelink officer Albert offers him a way out — coach a chaotic youth soccer team made up of refugee and Indigenous teens as part of a community outreach program — John reluctantly accepts. He expects disrespect. He gets it. What he doesn’t expect is the raw talent, trauma, and resistance he finds in the kids: Marcus, an Aboriginal teenager struggling with anger and abandonment; Ahmed, a gifted Afghan refugee with arrogance hiding grief; Julianne, the PCYC worker barely keeping the centre from falling apart.
Thrown into this powder keg, John tries to impose discipline, but ends up learning how to show up — for others, and for himself. As tensions erupt within the team and in the broader community, John and the kids must decide what they’re really fighting for: a win, a shot at redemption, or something deeper — dignity, family, and a future.
Social Services is a hard-edged, emotionally charged redemption story set in the overlooked corners of regional Australia. It’s not about the beautiful game — it’s about the people forced to survive when the rules are rigged.
Concept
Social Services is a 100–110 minute feature film blending character drama, social critique, and underdog sports energy — with sharp teeth and a huge heart. It fits squarely in the tradition of working-class redemption narratives like The Merger, Hunger, or Billy Elliot, while grounded in the cultural specificity of Australia’s refugee and Indigenous tensions.
The film is built around clashes — of generations, cultures, masculinities — and the uneasy alliances formed in their wake. It explores how trauma, care, and leadership are all inherited and learned. The soccer backdrop isn’t about goals and glory — it’s about movement, teamwork, and finding structure in chaos.
Visually, the film contrasts hard fluorescent interiors with sun-baked ovals and humid twilight scrimmages. The soundscape leans into breath, ball thuds, and quiet — amplifying moments of rupture and grace. John’s limp and prosthetic are more than symbolic: they ground the story in pain, endurance, and bodily memory.
At its heart, Social Services is a story about what real help looks like — messy, uncomfortable, often failing — and how healing can come from those society tries hardest to discard. It’s not a fairy tale. But it is, in its way, a love story.
Development stage
Treatment
