Some of the grinning winners from The Sapphires

So I thought I would recap the outcome of the AACTA awards that were held on Wednesday night and that I previewed last week. The full list of winners in the feature categories is listed below (winners in bold were ones I elected ‘would win’ in my preview, those underlined were once I said ‘should win’):

Best Supporting Actress – Jessica Mauboy in The Sapphires
Best Supporting Actor – Anthony Starr in Wish You Were Here
Best Lead Actress – Deborah Mailman in The Sapphires
Best Lead Actor – Chris O’Dowd in The Sapphires
Best Costume Design – Tess Schofield for The Sapphires
Best Production Design – Melinda Doring for The Sapphires
Best Original Music Score – Matteo Zingales and Jono Ma for Not Suitable for Children
Best Sound – Andrew Plain, Bry Jones, Pete Smith, Ben Osmo & John Simpson for The Sapphires
Best Editing – Dany Cooper ASE for The Sapphires
Best Cinematography – Warwick Thornton for The Sapphires
Best Adapted Screenplay – Keith Thompson and Tony Briggs for The Sapphires
Best Original Screenplay – Kieran Darcy-Smith and Felicity Price for Wish You Were Here
Best Direction  – Wayne Blair for The Sapphires
Best Film – The Sapphires

I did pretty well actually, with 11 of my 14 ‘will wins’ picking up the award. Mainly by picking The Sapphires a fair bit on what turned out to be a dominant night for the film. I was expecting them to take out the most awards, but was surprised at the level of dominance that the film enjoyed. I am a little gobsmacked that Burning Man received absolutely nothing and I know fans of Lore (which I haven’t seen) were a similarly surprised that it did not receive any awards. But I can’t have too many complaints, The Sapphires was a really enjoyable and upbeat film and with one or two exceptions (which I will refrain from mentioning), I think that the film was deserving of everything that came its way. Would just have been nice to see a little more variety.

Here’s hoping that the AACTAs can continue to gain traction within the Australian marketplace and get lots more people to see the films that are nominated and take out the gongs.

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