Angel Baby

Two people who meet in a therapy group become attached to each other. Both live with a diagnosis of schizophrenia and both have built an arrangement of their own. They start living together. Then she becomes pregnant, and the two of them begin to question the treatment they are on. That shifts the balance each of them had built. Michael Rymer's first film reduces nobody to a diagnosis; the two are people first and patients second. The telling neither waits for a miracle nor declares disaster in advance. Where the care system falls short is in the film as well. John Lynch and Jacqueline McKenzie take the leads. It won seven awards at the 1995 Australian Film Institute Awards, best film, director, actor and actress among them.