In 2003, Margaret Pomeranz was arrested. That story is now a comedy show (2025)

On July 3, 2003, around a dozen police officers raided Sydney's Balmain Town Hall. But they weren't there for drugs or dangerous behaviour. They were there to turn off a DVD of Larry Clark's psychological thriller, Ken Park.

The film had been kicking up controversy worldwide, but Australia went and banned it. Or, more specifically, the Office of Film and Literature Classification refused to classify the film over scenes of "actual sex, sexualised violence and what appeared to be child sex abuse".

Local festival showings were swiftly cancelled, but beloved film critic Margaret Pomeranz had organised a covert screening for a couple-hundred cinephiles.

That was until the cops showed up.

After she refused to turn the film off, NSW police arrested Pomeranz and four co-conspirators. The screening was halted and the DVD confiscated.

More than 20 years later, comedians and film experts Alexei Toliopoulos and Zachary Ruane are mining the moment for their new Melbourne International Comedy Festival show, Refused Classification.

For love and cinema

Pomeranz and the other rule-breakers arrested were released without charges, but the film remains banned from viewing or screening in Australia.

Toliopoulos and Ruane reminisced about the saga during a podcast taping — but it was a secret, modern screening that spurred the pair on to create a show.

"I noticed on Instagram there was a film collective, who I won't name because, technically, what they did was still illegal," Ruane explains.

"They were like, 'Oh, we're screening an independent American film from the early 2000s but we can't say what it's called.'"

Ruane had an inkling what it might be, heading along to the surreptitious screening.

"It's a strange film, because no film can can carry that weight on its shoulders.

"I thought, 'This is perfect timing.'"

The duo use the Ken Park incident as a launching pad for a show that ties censorship in Australia together with their undying love and reverence for Pomeranz — as well as long-time co-host and fellow critic David Stratton.

"[At The Movies] was my favourite show growing up, and it was such an access point to not just the popcorn blockbusters, but they'd also be talking about some weird, tiny, little Hungarian film that's playing out in the independent cinema," Toliopoulos says

But Toliopoulos and Ruane knew they'd have to convey the impact that Pomeranz and Stratton have had on Australian cinephiles to their audiences.

"There are people in the audience that have no idea who Margaret and David are, but then we've had people in the audience that were at the Balmain Town Hall screening," Ruane says.

As their show started to take shape, Toliopoulos — who co-created investigative pop culture podcasts Finding Drago and Finding Desperado — jumped feet-first into a mountain of research. This included digging into archives, documentaries and a two-hour interview with Stratton himself, who has a long history of fighting film censorship in Australia.

Acting as a director for the Sydney Film Festival for nearly 20 years, Stratton was instrumental in bringing in the R18+ classification, allowing for films with more controversial topics to be screened locally, instead of being outright banned.

His dedication to screening the unscreenable, including Soviet films, landed him on ASIO's "persons of interest" list between the 1950s and 70s.

Making more films available to Australian audiences is "probably the greatest impact [Stratton] had on this country", Toliopoulos says.

"We talked to him about that, and it was great to be able to implement that in the show and how he researched and how he worked."

In bad taste

While Stratton was onboard to help the duo from early days, Pomeranz proved a little more elusive.

"It was only maybe two months ago, finally we got in touch with her. She's my actual hero of all time so I was so nervous but it could not have gone better," Toliopoulos says.

The 11th-hour meeting turned out to be a boon for Toliopoulos. With a couple of early trial shows under their belts, he knew exactly how to explain the concept to his hero.

"I said the show is a comedy, but we never make fun of you and it's all well-researched and in good taste," he says.

Both Ruane and Toliopoulos say that, while their show deals with the serious topic of film censorship, entertainment was front of mind — starting with them donning exaggerated Stratton and Pomeranz wigs.

For Ruane, Refused Classification was an opportunity to evolve the comedy skills he's spent more than a decade honing in sketch comedy group Aunty Donna.

"When you first start out doing comedy, you have to pick funny ideas and that's the only way you can make something funny," Ruane says.

"I feel like this show is my first foray into going, 'Alright, I'm going to explore something that I'm passionate about, ideas that I want to communicate and I'll just use my comedic lens to do it.'

"It's very much exactly in between an Aunty-Donna-style sketch show and an Alexei-style documentary."

Not so laid-back Larrikin

The catalytic event for Refused Classification might have happened 20 years ago, but the murky monster that is film censorship is very much alive and well in Australia.

"There's a huge disconnect between how Australia perceives itself culturally," Ruane says. "We've got this perception of a really laid-back country but the facts don't agree."

"There's so much film that has been banned or censored even now," Toliopoulos agrees.

"Like Ladybird, the Greta Gerwig movie, that's a movie made for teenagers that is about teenage life. But because they drop the c-bomb twice [Australian distributor Universal] censored it to get down from an MA15+ to a M. That's crazy."

However, Toliopoulos and Ruane agree that film censorship, or the banning of films, is not a binary issue.

"The debate is not about whether things should be banned or not … it's about where the line falls when it comes to individual choice," Ruane says.

"Where exactly do we say this is no longer acceptable? And why?"

Toliopoulos says this question was the "light bulb" moment that convinced the pair 2025 was the right time to stage Refused Classification.

"We were very conscious that we're making a show that's set in 2003 about this one specific incident. Why is it important now?" Toliopoulos says.

"It just really dawned on us, these things happen all the time and they're still happening."

Refused Classification is at Melbourne International Comedy Festival until April 20 before moving on to Sydney, Perth and Brisbane.