The ceremony was hosted by Graham Kennedy and televised in Australia on ABC.
[4] Breaker Morant received 13 nominations across ten feature film award categories, winning all ten categories it was nominated for including: Best Film, Best Direction for Bruce Beresford, Best Actor for Jack Thompson, Best Supporting Actor for Bryan Brown and Best Screenplay for Jonathan Hardy, David Stevens, Bruce Beresford.
[5] The only other winners in the feature film categories was Tracy Mann for Best Actress, for Hard Knocks; Jury Prize for Hard Knocks; Jill Perryman for Best Supporting Actress, for ...Maybe This Time; and Peter Sculthorpe for Best Original Music Score, for Manganinnie.
[5] Although Bird of the Thunder Woman is considered the winner of the Best Cinematography – Documentary category, it was the recipient of a "silver prize" at the awards, while No Such a Place, also a finalist in the category, was presented with a "bronze prize".
[2] Winners are listed first and marked in a separate colour, in boldface.