The Auscritic awards will be held between 8pm – 11pm on 22 March 2025 in at The Backlot Cinema in Melbourne
Members will have received a voting form via Qualtrics where you can nominate for the Best Film awards. Please check your spam folder to ensure that you receive this email, and if you have any issues accessing it, please contact AFCA.Auscritic@gmail.com. For ease of communication it is important you contact us via this email address. Please refrain from contacting AFCA committee members directly regarding access to the voting form or awards submissions.
First round voting will remain open until 11:45pm EST Sunday 2 March 2025. Once voting is closed, we will send out the nominees for the 2024 AFCA Awards for members to vote on from 4 March 2025. Second and final round voting will close at 11:45pm EST Sunday 16 March 2025.
For the Australian film categories, we have a ranked system with 1 being the highest, to 5 being the lowest. Please rank your nominations in order for your vote to count.
For the International film categories, we are accepting written entries for films that were released theatrically or via streaming services from the 1 January 2024 to the 31 December 2024. We will check dates once the nominations have been received.
We are also excited to announce that entries for the Auscritic Writing and Broadcast Awards are now open, including the announcement of a new award and changes to an existing award.
The awards include:
- Ivan Hutchinson Award for best long-form writing on an Australian film ($500)
- Award for best review of an individual Australian film ($250)
- Award for best review of an individual non-Australian film ($250)
- Jim Murphy Broadcast award for best radio show or podcast ($250)
- The Lee Gambin Award for Repertory Film Criticism: Cultural Coverage of a Film Made Prior to 1995 ($250)
AFCA, alongside Cinemaniacs, is proud to announce The Lee Gambin Award for Repertory Film Criticism.
The Cinemaniacs board shared the below statement about the introduction of this new award honouring the great Lee Gambin:
“On behalf of Melbourne’s Cinemaniacs film collective, we are deeply moved that the Australian Film Critics Association have honoured our founder, friend, and champion Lee Gambin with an award in his name. The Lee Gambin Award will celebrate and nurture Australian criticism of movies made before 1995, with winners exhibiting the same passion, respect, and dignity that marked Lee’s work.
“This is his legacy, and we are thrilled to see it honoured in this way.”
Work eligible for this award includes written essays, commentary tracks, and video essays. Podcasts or YouTube videos are not eligible.
We are also proud to announce that the Ivan Hutchinson Award for best long-form writing on Australian cinema will expand to include long-form articles and long-form interview pieces, alongside the long-form reviews that the award has previously recognised. This shift seeks to honour writing that is not exclusively in the form of a review or critical analysis, with the intention of recognising the breadth of film writing that takes place within AFCA that both comments on the film industry and engages with the practitioners who bring it to life.
We are also proud to continue to support and champion the work of critical analysis that takes place in the broadcast sphere with the Jim Murphy Broadcast award for best radio show or podcast.
When submitting your pieces for consideration, please ensure that they were published in between 1 January 2024 to 31 December 2024. Additionally, please ensure that they are focused on film and cinema. Television coverage is not eligible for consideration.
Each recipient will receive a monetary award alongside a physical award.
For those who are submitting work for consideration in the AFCA Writing and Broadcast awards, we request that you submit your entry to the AFCA (Auscritic) Awards email address: auscriticawards@gmail.com and to Greg King, Secretary: kingaroy99@gmail.com
Please ensure that you follow these steps when submitting your written entries:
· Entries must be submitted in a PDF format
· Entries must not include your name in the file
· Entries must be titled with the name of the award you are submitting for, followed by the name of the film eg. Award for Best Review of an Individual Australian Film – The Emu War
· In your email body, please include the following details:
o Your name
o The name of the award you are submitting for
o The name of the film you have written about
o The publication where the review or article was published, including publication date
o If possible, a link to where the review is published or accessible
o This information will not be submitted to the judges, but is used for entry tracking purposes
· Please send separate emails for each entry you wish to submit
For written entries, it is assumed that a long-form piece is any written piece over 2000 words, where an individual review is no more than 1500 words.
Please ensure that you follow these steps when submitting your broadcast entries:
· Please submit one episode or clip that is no longer than 45 minutes long
o If it is easier to provide an audio file, please do so in an accessible way (ie. Send an accessible Google Drive link)
· Entries can include your name
· In your email body, please include the following details:
o The name of the film you have broadcast about
o The publication where the broadcast was published or aired, including publication date
o If possible, a link to where the broadcast can be accessed
All entries for the AFCA Writing and Broadcast Awards must be received to the auscriticawards@gmail.com and to Greg King, Secretary: kingaroy99@gmail.com by 11:45pm EST 4 March 2025. No late entries will be accepted.
If you have any questions, please reach out to AFCA.Auscritic@gmail.com and I (Andrew F Peirce) will answer them as soon as possible.
Key Dates:
AFCA Awards Voting
First Round Voting Opens: Now
First Round Voting Closes: 11:45pm EST Sunday 2 March 2025
Second Round Voting Opens: 4 March 2025
Second Round Voting Closes: 11:45pm EST Sunday 16 March 2025
AFCA Writing and Broadcast Awards
Submissions Open: Now
Final Submission Date: 11:45pm EST 4 March 2025
AFCA Awards Ceremony: 22 March 2025 – The Backlot Melbourne – 8pm – 11pm