Based on a book: when great stories leap from page to screen
Beamafilm
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27/02/2026
There’s something satisfying about watching a beloved book come alive on screen. The characters we once imagined, the landscapes we pictured in our minds, the emotions that lingered long after the final page - suddenly they’re moving, speaking, breathing. Celebrate film and television adaptations that honour their literary roots while carving out unforgettable cinematic identities of their own.
From Australasian novels to cinematic landmarks
Literary heritage can inspire some of the most enduring screen works - adaptations that capture both the spirit of their source material and the landscapes that shaped them. Puberty Blues, based on the novel by Kathy Lette and Gabrielle Carey, delivers a raw, unfiltered portrait of youth, surf culture and growing up. The Getting of Wisdom brings Henry Handel Richardson’s coming-of-age novel to life with honesty and emotional precision while Whakapapa of a Māori Phrasebook brings the written word to life, weaving language, lineage and cultural memory on screen.
Literary classics with global reach
Books have always travelled well, and so have their screen adaptations. Seventh Heaven adapts a stage and literary success into emotionally rich cinema, and A Farewell to Arms, from Ernest Hemingway’s novel, remains one of cinema’s great wartime romances. Kangaroo, drawn from D.H. Lawrence’s novel, offers an outsider’s lens on Australia and Playing Beattie Bow, adapted from Ruth Park’s classic book, transports viewers across generations in a tender story of belonging and self-discovery.
Great books find new life on screen
Whether you’re revisiting a childhood favourite, discovering a literary classic for the first time, or comparing page and screen interpretations, our 'Based on a Book watchlist is an invitation to experience storytelling in its most adaptable form. Because some stories are simply too good to stay on the page.
Explore the collection on Beamafilm - where great books find new life on screen.
Watch for FREE with a participating library card or on a 30-day trial. Also, you can rent a film for 72 hours.
Eilis, a young Irish girl, lands in 1950s Brooklyn and soon gets used to the freer life. She falls in love with Tony, who hails from an Italian family. However, a tragedy befalls her back home.
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In the 18th century, the seductive and manipulative Lady Susan uses devious tactics to win the heart of the eligible Reginald De Courcy.
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Gertrude Bell's life as an explorer, cartographer, and archaeologist for the British Empire.
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A romantic drama set in Germany just before WWI and centered on a married woman who falls in love with her husband's protégé. Separated first by duties and then by the war, they pledge their devotion to one another.
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In this sequel to Hope and Glory, Bill Rohan has grown up and is drafted into the army, where he and his eccentric best mate, Percy, battle their snooty superiors on the base and look for love in town.
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Two teenage girls fight peer pressure in 1980's Australia. Having previously been in their own group, they desperately try to break into the "in" crowd before working to regain respect and equality again.
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An orphan finds a magic book of hypnotism that changes her life - but things soon get out of hand.
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Colette is pushed by her husband to write novels under his name. Upon their success, she fights to make her talents known, challenging gender norms.
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The romance that challenged two countries. In 1947, Seretse Khama, the King of Botswana, met Ruth Williams, a London office worker. Together, they changed the world.
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A stirring love story based on George Sand's Francois Le Champi. Despite the odds stacked against him, a young orphan grows from a boy into a man.
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In a Christmas classic, an angel helps a compassionate but despairingly frustrated businessman by showing what life would have been like if he never existed.
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Shaw’s classic play in which a Victorian dialect expert bets that he can teach a lower-class girl to speak proper English and thus be taken for a lady.
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Novelist Richard Somers and his wife abandon the emotional sterility of Europe in the early '20s for a new life in Australia.
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A Parisian sewer worker longs for a rise in status and a beautiful wife. He rescues a girl from the police, lives with her in a barren flat on the seventh floor, then goes to war.
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Anne, an 11 year-old orphan, takes on the world in this kid's classic. She embraces the opportunity to join a family on Prince Edward Island with a big heart and all the optimism she can muster.
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A wounded American soldier and a English nurse form a romantic connection during WW1.
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In 1938, an Englishman emigrates to Australia and becomes a cane-cutter. Sisters Kate and Dusty fall for him.
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An Englishwoman and an Australian prisoner of war meet in Malaya, then reunite after World War II.
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Teenaged Mowgli, who was raised by wolves, appears in a village in India and is adopted by Messua. Mowgli learns human language and some human ways quickly, though keeping jungle ideas.
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Mike, a.k.a. Storm Boy, lives with his recluse father on South Australia's lonely and beautiful coast. Here his spirit roams with his pet pelican, Mr. Percival.
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For the love of her new husband, Jeannie abandons a high society city life to trek into the vast, wild heart of Australia & face the enduring hardships of outback life & the battles against sexist & racial prejudices.
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An imaginative girl refuses the mould of Victorian society.
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In colonial Australia, an Aboriginal woman takes a lost white child under her wing.
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A discontented Sydney teenager travels back in time to 1873, whilst watching an old fashioned children’s game.
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An exploration into an early Māori phrasebook, first published in 1885.
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A laconic swagman is forced to care for his young daughter. Neither he nor his daughter are ready for each other. But in the beginning he’s all she’s got, and at the end, she’s all he’s got.
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War photographer W. Eugene Smith travels back to Japan where he documents the devastating effect of mercury poisoning in coastal communities.
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Schoolboys marooned on a Pacific island create their own savage civilization.
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In Italy 1327, accompanied by his apprentice, a Franciscan monk journeys to an isolated abbey in the Alps for a canonical function, only to discover that the abbey is now witness to several, mysterious murders.
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Desperate measures are taken by a man who tries to save his family from the dark side of the law, after they commit an unexpected crime.
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Abbott & Costello’s version of the famous fairy tale, about a young boy who trades the family cow for magic beans.
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On a picnic with her sisters, young Alice falls asleep as Reverend Dodgson starts to tell them a story. In her dream, Alice follows a white rabbit down a hole into a bewildering world of strange talking animals and nonsense rhymes.
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James Joyce's provocative novel 'Ulysses' comes to life in a new immersive film, Love's Bitter Mystery. Set in the atmospheric post-gold-boom mansion at Villa Alba in Kew, this feature focuses on a critical year in the young author's life.
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A modern retelling of Anna Sewell’s classic novel.
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