After a record year at the box office, will Australian movies connect with local audiences again? After a couple of lean years, 2015 saw record takings for local films of $84 million - this represented a 7.7 per cent share of total box office, the highest since 2001.
Last year, Mad Max: Fury Road led the way. The Water Diviner, Russell Crowe's directorial debut, scored well; family movies Oddball and Paper Planes drew audiences. Damon Gameau's That Sugar Film, an idiosyncratic adventure in advocacy, became the most successful locally produced non-IMAX documentary. And Jocelyn Moorhouse's The Dressmaker, at $18 million and counting, is arguably the biggest success story of them all. 
For 2016, the local push begins in earnest on Australia Day, with the release of Sue Brooks' Looking For Grace, and goes all the way to Boxing Day, when Red Dog: True Blue hits cinemas. In between, there are plenty of contenders, of which the following is a selection.
Looking for Grace
Opens:   January 26
Writer-director Sue Brooks, director of Japanese Story (2003), returns with a movie set both on the road and in the home, an unpredictably told tale with comic elements and bleak implications. Richard Roxburgh and Radha Mitchell are parents who set out in search of their missing teenage daughter (Odessa Young)
The Daughter
Opens:   March 17
Theatre director Simon Stone, in his feature debut, returns to a work he had already transformed for the stage: Ibsen's The Wild Duck. This adaptation, set in a contemporary Australian logging town, departs even further from its origins, but remains a tale of family secrets and deep-seated resentments. Ewen Leslie and Paul Schneider star alongside Geoffrey Rush, Miranda Otto, Sam Neill and the up-and-coming Odessa Young from Looking For Grace.
Sherpa
Opens:   March 24
Experienced Australian documentary filmmaker Jennifer Peedom was set to focus on the role of the Sherpas in the business of mountaineering, most of all a veteran, Phurba Tashi, who was about to make a record 22nd ascent of Everest. Then in mid-production, there was a tragic accident in which 16 Sherpas were killed in an avalanche.
A Month of Sundays
Opens: To be confirmed
Anthony LaPaglia returns to his home town of Adelaide, 35 years on, to play a real estate agent in the throes of a midlife crisis who receives a telephone call from his late mother. Director Matthew Saville (Felony, Noise) wrote the screenplay for this dark comedy; the cast also includes Justine Clarke, John Clarke and Julia Blake.
Jasper Jones
Opens: To be confirmed
There are high expectations for this adaptation of a much-loved Australian book, Craig Silvey's bestselling 2009 novel, in which he explicitly (and successfully) references To Kill A Mockingbird. The central character, Charlie, is played by 13-year-old Levi Miller, who made a strong impression as the young Peter Pan in the otherwise disappointing blockbuster Pan. Toni Collette and Dan Wyllie are Charlie's parents, and the film also features young actress Angourie Rice (who will make her Hollywood debut this year in The Nice Guys). Rachel Perkins (Bran Nue Dae) directs.
Red Dog: True Blue
Opens: Boxing Day
The filmmakers will be hoping that they can reconnect with the audiences who flocked in 2011 to Red Dog, a good-natured comedy about a kelpie who united a small community in the Pilbara in the 1970s. For this second version director Kriv Stenders is again on board, as is writer Daniel Taplitz, who adapted the Louis de Bernieres novel for the first movie. But this is a new cast, led by 13-year-old Levi Miller (Pan, Jasper Jones), that also includes Jason Isaacs, Bryan Brown and John Jarratt. The original red dog, Koko, won't be there, sadly; he died of heart failure in 2012.