Annual film award
The 44th Australian Film Institute Awards (generally known as the 2002 AFI Awards), were a series of awards presented by the Australian Film Institute (AFI). The awards celebrated the best in Australian feature film, television, documentary and short film productions of 2002. The ceremony took place at The Princess Theatre, Melbourne and was televised by Network Ten. 
Winners and nominees.
The nominations were announced on 19 October 2002. Leading the feature film nominees was "Rabbit-Proof Fence" with a total of ten nominations. All four of the Best Film nominees featured Indigenous subjects. "The Secret Life of Us," Network Ten's drama about a group of friends who live in a St Kilda, gained the most television nominations with five.
Tony Ayres' directorial debut, "Walking on Water," exploring the grief, tenderness, stupidity and humour that arises from death, received five awards, the most for any production. In the television category, the small-screen movie "The Road From Coorain," an adaptation of Jill Ker Conway's memoir of the same name, won four awards.
Controversies.
The decision to allow the unreleased drama "Swimming Upstream" to receive five award nominations was met with great dismay by other entrants. The distributors of all four nominees for best film were quoted as being "angry" and "disappointed" that the nominations include a film without a cinema release by the cut-off date of 26 September 2002. Another film, "Garage Days", also received three nominations despite being released a week after the deadline.
Winners are listed first and highlighted in boldface.
Multiple nominations.
The following films received multiple nominations.
References.
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