Strictly Ballroom (1992)

Scott Hastings, the frustrated son of a family of ballroom dancers, has been training since the age of six. His mother Shirley teaches ballroom dancing, and his father Doug meekly handles maintenance chores at the dance studio, while secretly watching old footage of his bygone dance competitions as well as Scott’s in a back room. Scott struggles to establish his personal style of dance to win the Pan-Pacific Grand Prix Dancing Championship, but his innovative and flashy “crowd-pleasing” steps are not considered “strictly ballroom”, and as such are denounced by Australian Dancing Federation head Barry Fife.

Scott and his dancing partner Liz Holt both lose the Southern Districts Waratah Championships due to Scott dancing his own steps, and three days later, Liz leaves him to team up with Ken Railings, the recent Waratah Championships winner, whose partner Pam Short has broken both her legs in a car accident (as just previously wished upon by Liz). With Scott now alone only three weeks until the championships, Shirley teams up with his coach Les Kendall, her co-instructor at the studio, to start desperately hunting for a new partner for him. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to both, Scott is approached by Fran, an overlooked “beginner” dancer at the studio, and eventually agrees to partner with her, intrigued by her willingness to dance “his way”.