The 2018 AACTA Awards presented by Foxtel has recently announced its nominees including Faraway Productions own Director Axel Grigor and Producer Faramarz K-Rahber for their documentary film Jill Bilcock: Dancing The Invisible.
Other nominees included comedy-drama Ladies in Black, drama series Mystery Road and gay rights movement mini-series Riot with 11 nominations each, followed closely by Australian western Sweet Country with 10 nominations. In another record-breaking year, a total of 19 feature films have received nominations, with five films competing for the highly coveted AACTA Award for Best Film presented by Foxtel including Boy Erased, Breath, Cargo, Ladies In Black and Sweet Country.
The five nominees for the inaugural AACTA Award for Best Indie Film presented by Event Cinemas – which honours the finest Australian films of the past year with a budget of under $2 million – are The Jacobson Brothers’ dark comedy Brother’s Nest; Benjamin Gilmour’s Jirga, which was recently announced as Australia’s entry for this year’s Best Foreign Language Film Oscar; Stan’s first Australian Original feature film, Mairi Cameron’s The Second; Alena Lodkina’s Venice Film Festival Biennale College funded film Strange Colours; and Jason Raftopoulos’ West of Sunshine, whose star, the late Damian Hill, also received a posthumous nomination for Best Lead Actor.
In television, 51 productions compete for 21 awards, with five nominees competing for the AACTA Award for Best Drama Series: Jack Irish, Mr Inbetween, Mystery Road, Rake and Wentworth.
Leading individual nominations are Joel Edgerton (Boy Erased) and Simon Baker (Breath), who compete in four categories: Best Film, Best Direction, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor. Not only does this mark first-time production and direction nominations for the AFI and AACTA Award-winning auteurs, it also marks the first time in AFI | AACTA history that an individual has been nominated in both direction and acting categories in the same year.
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