The livewire Philippou brothers made it two from two when their haunting horror Bring Her Back won best film and direction at the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Awards on Friday evening.
Having won the same awards with their debut film, Talk To Me, two years ago, twins Danny and Michael Philippou’s darker and more disturbing follow-up won 10 AACTA statuettes at the ceremony on the Gold Coast.
The brothers brought their trademark anarchic energy to the awards, bouncing on stage and joking with each other about wearing T-shirts rather than dressing up.
“After Talk To Me [became a global hit], we had a bunch of different doors open up and a bunch of different paths that we could have taken,” Michael said. “The right path was the one that came back home to Australia.”
When he described their approach to filmmaking as “unprofessional” backstage, Danny added “with a splash of chaos”.
Brit Sally Hawkins, the two-time Oscar nominee who played a troubled foster mother of two teenage orphans, won the award for best actress in a film.
Over two ceremonies that started with the Industry Awards on Wednesday, Bring Her Back also claimed best editing, cinematography, casting, costume design, hair and make-up, original score and sound.
The other big winner at the main event – hosted by comedian Celeste Barber, and with Baz Luhrmann, Catherine Martin and Succession stars Sarah Snook and Brian Cox among the big-name guests – was the streaming drama The Narrow Road To the Deep North.
Director Justin Kurzel’s emotional adaption of Richard Flanagan’s Booker Prize-winning novel for Prime Video won nine awards.
Jacob Elordi – who has been nominated for an Oscar for Frankenstein and stars opposite Margot Robbie in Wuthering Heights, which opens in Australia next week – won best actor in a TV drama for playing a young doctor cast into the horrors of a Burmese prisoner of war camp in The Narrow Road.
The miniseries also won awards for direction, supporting actress for Heather Mitchell, cinematography, costume design, editing, production design, original score and sound.
The Belle Gibson fake cancer drama Apple Cider Vinegar beat it to win best miniseries but its only other award was best casting in television – a surprisingly modest haul for an acclaimed Netflix show that had eight actors among its 20 nominations.
In the film categories, Richard Roxburgh won best actor for playing jailed Australian journalist Peter Greste in the drama The Correspondent.
Accepting the award, Greste said he initially wondered how Cleaver Greene, Roxburgh’s carousing character in Rake, would handle 400 days in a concrete cell in Cairo. “It turns out that he did it with incredible grace and humility and talent,” he said.
Greste dedicated the award to the more than 1000 journalists who have been killed on the job and thousands more who have been imprisoned since his BBC colleague Kate Peyton was murdered in Mogadishu, Somalia, in 2005.
In the most emotional moment of the awards, the late Julian McMahon won best supporting actor for his role as a menacing surf gang leader in the thriller The Surfer. “I miss him so much,” his widow, Kelly, said through tears. “It’s such a wonderful feeling to have a win after so much loss.”
There were also tears when Margaret Pomeranz introduced the In Memoriam segment that included her At The Movies co-host David Stratton, actor Henri Szeps, director Donald Crombie, presenter Marilyn Mayo and broadcaster John Laws.
Deborah Mailman, who was the tender-hearted mother of a joey-obsessed teenage girl in the family drama Kangaroo, won best supporting actress.
Snook won the Trailblazer Award for her stellar international career, which has included acclaimed roles in Succession, The Picture of Dorian Gray on stage in London and New York, and the miniseries Pieces Of Me.
Veteran director Bruce Beresford, whose long Australian and Hollywood career has included Don’s Party, Breaker Morant and Driving Miss Daisy through to last year’s The Travellers, won the Longford Lyell lifetime achievement award, while producers Kristina Ceyton and Samantha Jennings (The Babadook, Talk To Me, Bring Her Back) collected the Byron Kennedy Award for outstanding creative enterprise.
Other popular winners were Miranda Tapsell, who collected the award for best acting in a comedy for Top End Bub, and Celia Pacquola, who won best stand-up special for I’m As Surprised As You Are.
The ABC’s The Newsreader won best drama series, TV screenplay, actress in a TV drama for Anna Torv and supporting actor for Daniel Henshall.
The national broadcaster’s haul also included two awards for Hard Quiz – best comedy entertainment program and best comedy performer for host Tom Gleeson – best children’s program for Play School: All Together, best entertainment program for Portrait Artist of the Year and best lifestyle program for Grand Designs Australia.
In its fifth and final season, the Stan drama Bump won its first AACTA award for best narrative comedy series.
The SBS docudrama The People vs Robodebt, about the controversial automated Centrelink debt recovery scheme, won best documentary or factual program and best direction in nonfiction TV.
But it was the 33-year-old Phillipou brothers who dominated the awards, continuing their stellar rise in film since breaking through as manic YouTubers.
While Bring Her Back was not the worldwide box office smash that Talk To Me was, it was a well-reviewed exploration of grief that continued their relationship with buzzy American studio A24.
“Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, they’re directors,” Michael Phillipou told this masthead late last year. “We’re still bogans from Australia.”
Those bogans have been editing a documentary about Mexican death match wrestling and expect to direct another horror film before Talk To Me 2.
The two ceremonies are part of a five-day festival of talks and screenings that features Luhrmann, screenwriter David Williamson, Bridgerton star Yerin Ha, The Pitt’s Shabana Azeez and many nominees.
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