Stephen Maxwell Johnson’s High Ground has won the top feature film prize at Australia’s Screen Producers Association Awards.
The drama picked up the Feature Film Production of the Year award at a ceremony tonight (March 30), held as part of SPA’s annual conference on Queensland’s Gold Coast.
Set in the 1930s, the film stars Simon Baker as a First World War veteran who teams up with a young Aboriginal man, played by Jacob Junior Nayinggul, to hunt down a dangerous outlaw. Produced by Maxo Studios, Bunya Productions and Savage Films, it premiered at the Berlinale in 2020 and proved a local box office success when released by Madman last year.
Maggie Miles from Savage Films accepted the award alongside fellow producer Witiyana Marika, who told the audience that High Ground was based on a story passed down from his grandfather to his father and then to him.
The Feature Documentary Production of the Year went to Firestarter – The Story of Bangarra, which explores how three indigenous brothers created a hugely celebrated dance company. Directed by Neil Minchin and Wayne Blair, it was produced by Ivan O’Mahoney of In Films, and previously won best documentary at Australia’s Academy Awards.
Further winners included Leigh Whannell’s The Invisible Man, which earned Goalpost Pictures the Screen Business Export Award. Produced with US outfit Blumhouse Productions, the thriller took more than $143m at the worldwide box office, despite being released in February 2020, shortly before cinemas closed due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Breakthrough Business of the Year went to Bronte Pictures, one of the companies behind Kiah Roache-Turner’s zombie action film Wyrmwood Apocalypse, which opened in Australian cinemas earlier this year.
Sydney-based Northern Pictures was named Business of the Year, having already won best reality series with Love On The Spectrum and was joint winner for documentary programme or series with See What You Made Me Do, an examination of domestic violence.
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