‘Nitram,’ ‘Penguin Bloom’ among 2021 Australian Academy Awards nominees

Justin Kurzel’s Nitram, featuring Cannes Best Actor winner Caleb Landry Jones, and Glendyn Ivin’s Penguin Bloom, starring two-time Oscar nominee Naomi Watts, were among the 2021 Australian Academy of Cinema Television Arts (AACTA) nominees announced this weekend. Stephen Maxwell Johnson’s High Ground, starring Simon Baker, led the nominations with eight, including double nominations in the lead actor and supporting actor categories.

The nominations for the AACTA International Awards will be coming soon. Winners will be announced January 2022. Television nominees can be found here.

The AACTA Awards (formerly the AFI Awards) have honoured screen excellence in Australia for over 60 years, since the first AFI Awards were held in 1958.

Held annually in Sydney in recognition and celebration of Australia’s highest achievements in film and television, the AACTA Awards present over 55 awards across two major ceremonies.

The peer-assessed AACTA Awards are the only Australian industry body to honour practitioners across all crafts and industry sectors, including feature film, documentary, short film, television, online, visual effects and animation.

Over the past 60 years, the Awards have grown to become a world-class marker of screen excellence alongside the Oscars® and the BAFTAs. Many of Australia’s most iconic and successful screen talent, both in front of and behind the camera – from actors such as Cate Blanchett, Russell Crowe, Nicole Kidman, Deborah Mailman and Hugo Weaving, to directors such as Bruce Beresford, Gillian Armstrong, Dr George Miller and Warwick Thornton, to craftspeople such as Jill Bilcock, Catherine Martin and John Seale – have come through the ranks and been recognised among their peers at the AFI and AACTA Awards before going on to achieve international accolades and become household names.

Here is the full list of nominees. Winners will be announced live at the Sydney Opera House on Wednesday, December 8.

Best Film

The Dry
The Furnace
High Ground
Nitram
Penguin Bloom
Rams

Best Indie Film

Disclosure
Ellie and Abbie (& Ellie’s Dead Aunt)
Lone Wolf
Moon Rock For Monday
My First Summer
Under My Skin

Best Direction

Rob Connolly, The Dry
Roderick MacKay, The Furnace
Stephen Maxwell Johnson, High Ground
Justin Kurzel, Nitram
Glendyn Ivin, Penguin Bloom

Best Lead Actor

Simon Baker, High Ground
Eric Bana, The Dry
Caleb Landry Jones, Nitram
Ahmed Malek, The Furnace
Jacob Junior Nayinggul, High Ground

Best Lead Actress

Rose Byrne, Peter Rabbit 2
Judy Davis, Nitram
Noni Hazlehurst, June Again
Genevieve O’Reilly, The Dry
Naomi Watts, Penguin Bloom

Best Supporting Actor

Michael Caton, Rams
Baykali Ganambarr, The Furnace
Anthony LaPaglia, Nitram
Sean Mununggurr, High Ground
Jack Thompson, High Ground

Best Supporting Actress

Essie Davis, Nitram
Claudia Karvan, June Again
Esmerelda Marimowa, High Ground
Miranda Tapsell, The Dry
Jacki Weaver, Penguin Bloom

Best Original Screenplay

Monica Zanetti, Ellie and Abbie (& Ellie’s Dead Aunt)
Roderick MacKay, The Furnace
Chris Anastassiades, High Ground
JJ Winlove, June Again
Shaun Grant, Nitram

Best Adapted Screenplay

Rob Connolly, Harry Cripps, The Dry
Shaun Grant, Harry Cripps, Penguin Bloom
Will Gluck, Patrick Burleigh, Peter Rabbit 2
Jules Duncan, Rams

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Erik Anderson

Erik Anderson is the founder/owner and Editor-in-Chief of AwardsWatch and has always loved all things Oscar, having watched the Academy Awards since he was in single digits; making lists, rankings and predictions throughout the show. This led him down the path to obsessing about awards. Much later, he found himself in film school and the film forums of GoldDerby, and then migrated over to the former Oscarwatch (now AwardsDaily), before breaking off to create AwardsWatch in 2013.

He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Hollywood Critics Association (HCA) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.

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