Nicole Kidman picked up the prize for best supporting actress for her performance in Joel Edgerton’s Boy Erased at the 2018 Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts (AACTA) awards, held Wednesday night in Sydney.
Kidman plays a religious woman who forces her gay son (Lucas Hedges) to undergo church-supported gay conversion in the film, adapted from Garrard Conley’s memoir. Edgerton also picked up the AACTA award for best adapted screenplay for Boy Erased.
But the big winner in Sydney was Warwick Thornton’s Australian western Sweet Country, which picked up six AACTA awards, including best film, best director and best actor for lead Hamilton Morris. Set in Australia’s Northern Territory frontier in the 1920s, Sweet Country follows an Aboriginal farmhand who, after he shoots a white man in self-defense, goes on the run, pursued by a vigilante posse.
Angourie Rice won best actress for her performance in Bruce Beresford’s Ladies in Black, a dramedy set among a group of department store employees in 1959 Sydney. Mentalist star Simon Baker picked up the AACTA Award for best supporting actor for his role in period surfing drama Breath, which he also directed.
In the television categories, Australian comedian Hannah Gadsby picked up the AACTA award for best performance in a television comedy for her critically acclaimed stand-up special Nanette.
Crime drama Mystery Road and TV movie Riot swept the main TV categories, picking up three awards each. Mystery Road won best drama series as well as honors for best supporting actress and actor in a TV drama for Deborah Mailman and co-star Wayne Blair. Riot, which looks at a 1978 gay rights demonstration that was brutally suppressed by Australian police, won for best telefeature or miniseries as well as best lead actor and lead actress in the category for Damon Herriman and Kate Box, respectively.