AFCA Awards host Adam Ross.
Jennifer Kent’s The Nightingale dominated the Australian Film Critics Association’s annual awards, winning all eight prizes for local narrative features, while The Australian Dream was named best documentary.
The 1825 revenge drama produced by Kristina Ceyton, Bruna Papandrea, Steve Hutensky and Kent was voted best film, shading fellow nominees Buoyancy, Hotel Mumbai, Judy and Punch and The King.
King took the director and screenplay awards and Aisling Franciosi was named best actress, mirroring the film’s success at the AACTA Awards.
The other accolades went to Baykali Ganambarr (best actor), Sam Claflin (supporting actor), Magnolia Maymuru (supporting actress) and Radek Ladczuk (cinematography).
The win for Daniel Gordon’s The Australian Dream, produced by Good Thing Productions’ Nick Batzias and Virginia Whitwell and Passion Pictures’ John Battsek, followed its AACTA award.
In the international categories Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman was judged best English language film, Bong Joon-Ho’s Parasite best foreign language film and Todd Douglas Miller’s Apollo 11 best documentary.
Hosted by Adam Ross, the awards were presented last Friday night at The Classic in Elsternwick.
The writing awards were judged by Debra Lawrance, Torre DeRoche, Ray Mooney and Richard Sowada. The winners:
The Ivan Hutchinson Award: Shame by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas.
The Australian Review Award: Hierarchies of Horror: The Violent Refrains of Jennifer Kent’s The Nightingale by Travis Johnson.
The International Review Award: Pain & Glory by Joanna Di Mattia.