The Age Critics' Award for Best Australian Feature
Subcategory of Awards Australian Awards
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History

The Age Critics' Award for Best Australian Feature is held during the Melbourne International Film Festival. The award is for the best first-release Australian narrative feature in the festival.

Notes

  • First awarded in 2011.

Latest Winners / Recipients

Year: 2012

winner form y separately published work icon Hail Amiel Courtin-Wilson , ( dir. Amiel Courtin-Wilson ) Australia : Flood Projects , 2011 Z1800326 2011 single work film/TV thriller crime

'Dan is in love with Leanne. They were born on the same day - 19th June 1960. They eat together. They live together. They steal together. When Dan's love is suddenly ripped away from him, he is reduced to savagery. The past is not a dead thing, but may return, like a hunter, to follow us for a time.'

Source: Screen Australia. (Sighted: 29/1/2014)

Year: 2011

inaugural winner form y separately published work icon The Eye of the Storm Judy Morris , ( dir. Fred Schepisi ) Australia : 2011 Z1679559 2011 single work film/TV

'In a Sydney suburb, two nurses, a housekeeper and a solicitor attend to Elizabeth Hunter as her expatriate son and daughter convene at her deathbed. In dying, as in living, Mrs Hunter remains a formidable force on those around her. It is via Mrs Hunter's authority over living that her household and children vicariously face death and struggle to give consequence to life.

'Estranged from a mother who was never capable of loving them Sir Basil, a famous but struggling actor in London and Dorothy, an impecunious French princess, attempt to reconcile with her. In doing so they are reduced from states of worldly sophistication to floundering adolescence.

'The children unite in a common goal - to leave Australia with their vast inheritance. Moving through Sydney's social scene, they search for a way to fulfil their desire. Using the reluctant services of their family lawyer Arnold Wyburd, a man long in love with Mrs Hunter, they scheme to place their mother in a society nursing home to expedite her demise.

'Panic sets in as the staff sense the impending end of their eccentric world. Mrs Hunter confesses her profound disappointment at failing to recreate the state of humility and grace she experienced when caught in the eye of a cyclone fifteen years earlier.

'For the first time in their lives, the meaning of compassion takes the children by surprise. During a ferocious storm Mrs Hunter finally dies, not through a withdrawal of will but by an assertion of it. In the process of dying she re-lives her experience in the cyclone. Standing on a beach, she is calm and serene as devastation surrounds her.'

Source: Fred Schepisi's website, http://www.fredschepisi.com/
Sighted: 09/08/2011

Works About this Award

Critics Hail a 'Damaged Love Story' with Film Prize Philippa Hawker , 2012 single work column
— Appears in: The Saturday Age , 18 August 2012; (p. 18)
Schepisi's Artful Eye Gets Wink from Judges Philippa Hawker , 2011 single work column
— Appears in: The Saturday Age , 6 August 2011; (p. 26)
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