Feature films announced for AACTA Awards

The Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts has announced the first round of nominees for the 2012 AACTA Awards.

Among the nominees is a short list of 23 local feature films which screened in theatres across Australia in the last year, or due to screen in the coming months.The feature nominees cross a wide variety of genres, with films The Sapphires, Killer Elite, Mental, Iron Sky, Bait3D, Swerve and Burning Man.

The Australian Film Institute and AACTA CEO Damian Trewhella said: “The goal for a healthy Australian feature film industry has always been to combine festival and critical acclaim with audience appeal. The exceptional collection of Feature Films in Competition demonstrates that this year we are well on the way to achieving this mix, and that despite many challenges, we can celebrate a landmark year in the industry.”

“We are thrilled to see many of our former AFI Award-winning directors back with new films in competition. [But] we are also pleased to see fresh talents enter the fray, like Amiel Courtin-Wilson’s poetic and groundbreaking mix of documentary and fiction, Hail, Tony Krawitz’s brooding feature debut based on the Christos Tsiolkas novel, Dead Europe, and of course Wayne Blair’s exuberant and proudly feelgood musical feature The Sapphires.”