by Andrea Baker
From Hollywood award stages to streaming platforms, this year’s Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts (AACTA) awards ceremony (6 February) and festival (7-8 February) demonstrated that Australian women are powerfully reshaping the screen landscape.
The AACTA accolades are an attempt at Australia’s own Oscars, Golden Globes, and Emmys, all rolled into one. The big winners at Friday night’s ceremony held at the Home of the Arts (Gold Coast), were the Prime Video limited series, The Narrow Road to the Deep North, and the horror film, Bring Her Back, winning 10 awards each.
“There’s excitement about Australian stories,” Samantha Jennings, co-producer of Bring Her Back, said while accepting the award for best film, alongside the directors, Danny and Michael Philippou.
With co-producer Kristina Ceyton, Jennings received the Byron Kennedy Award for their company Causeway Films, which champions contemporary Australian screen storytelling (e.g. The Babadook; Of an Age, The Moogai, Went Up the Hill, Talk to Me). In 2025, The Hollywood Reporter said the duo were amongst “The Most Influential Women in International Film”.
Kate Armon and her husband, Craig Smith, received the Reg Grundy Award for their unscripted series, Brains on Tap!, a travelling trivia roadshow discovering Australia’s sharpest minds and interesting locals.
Clare Hughes received the Brian Walsh Award for emerging Australian talent for her roles in streaming series, such as Ponies (2026) and Ten Pound Poms (2025).
The AACTA’s Trailblazer Award went to actress Sarah Snook, who cemented her global acclaim in the hit streaming series, Succession as Siobhan “Shiv” Roy, earning Emmys (2022; 2023) and two Golden Globes (2022; 2024).
“She is the real deal…She’s extraordinary…She’s one of the best screen partners I’ve ever had; if not the best,” said Brian Cox, who played her on-screen father, Logan Roy, in the drama about an ageing, ruthless media mogul and which child will succeed him.
Snook won her third Golden Globe this year for All Her Fault, about a self-made female wealth manager who panics over the disappearance of her young son.
On Friday night, she also won an AACTA award for Best Female Actress in a Series for that performance, dedicating it to parents worldwide: “It’s our greatest duty to raise the next generation.”
At a packed forum on Saturday, hosted by filmmaker and actor Shane Jacobson, Snook (now a five-time AACTA awardee) discussed the increasing permeability between Australian storytelling and global audiences hungry for complex, female characters.
That lineage was also explored between award-winning actresses, Sacha Horler and Susie Porter, whose “being brave” insights reflected on creative resilience and the importance of intimacy coordinators. This year, Porter was nominated for two AACTA awards: Best Lead Actress in Film (The Travellers) and Best Supporting Actress in a Drama (Apple Cider Vinegar), the latter winning the award for Best Miniseries.
Behind the camera, Women at the Helm featured director Kate Woods (Kangaroo, Looking for Alibrandi), producers Tracey Vieira; Kylie Washington (Executive Producer at BBC Studios ANZ), Leela Varghese and Emma Hough Hobbs (Lesbian Space Princess), and writer Ange Betzien (Apple Cider Vinegar, Total Control). Offered a cross-generational snapshot of leadership shaping contemporary films and television, the session revealed that while progress has been made, misogyny in the industry remains a persistent undercurrent.
In 2024, research by screenwriter, producer and PhD student Belinda Lees highlighted that “dehumanising child-free women in film and television gives misogyny a stage”.
Research led by film scholar Deb Verhoeven in 2023 found that inequitable power dynamics behind the camera on Australian film sets are perniciously linked to intersectional factors (e.g., racism, sexism, ageism, ableism and homophobia).
On Sunday, the festival brought audiences up close and personal with award-winning director Emma Freeman (Fake; Stateless), and Emmy-nominated and globally recognised actress, Anna Torv, both from The Newsreader, the multi-award winning, ABC series about a fictional Australian newsroom set in the 1980s, where sexism and misogyny was normalised.
Freeman and Torv discussed their successful collaborations and future series (Dustfall), the gendered impact of sexual violence, revealing how female friendship in the cut-throat screen industry can be a buffer to the manosphere.
At the AACTA awards on Friday night, Torv won her second award for Best Lead Actress in a Drama for her portrayal of the feisty newsreader, Helen Norville, in The Newsreader.
“For all the Helens that are told you’re too much, you’re not,” she said.
The Newsreader also won Best Drama, Best Screenplay in Television and Best Supporting Actor in a Drama.
From this year’s AACTA season, it is clear that Australian women are driving a global screen culture defined by complexity, ambition, and female leadership.
