Breaker Morant is a 1980 Australian war drama film directed by Bruce Beresford, who co-wrote the screenplay based on Kenneth G. Ross's 1978 play of the same name. The film concerns the 1902 court martial of lieutenants Harry Morant, Peter Handcock and George Witton—one of the first war crime prosecutions in British military history. Australians serving in the British Army during the Second Anglo-Boer War, Morant, Handcock, and Witton stood accused of murdering captured enemy combatants and an unarmed civilian in the Northern Transvaal. The film is notable for its exploration of the Nuremberg Defence, the politics of the death penalty and the human cost of total war. As the trial unfolds, the events in question are shown in flashbacks. In 1980, the film won ten Australian Film Institute Awards including: Best Film, Best Direction, Leading Actor, Supporting Actor, Screenplay, Art Direction, Cinematography, and Editing. It was also nominated for the 1980 Academy Award for the Best Writing (Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium). Breaker Morant remains the movie with which Beresford is most identified and has "hoisted the images of the accused officers to the level of Australian icons and martyrs". In a 1999 interview Beresford explained that Breaker Morant "never pretended for a moment" that the defendants were not guilty as charged. He had intended the film to explore how wartime atrocities can be "committed by people who appear to be quite normal". Beresford concluded that he was "amazed" that so many people see his film as being about "poor Australians who were framed by the Brits". Synopsis In Pretoria, South Africa, in 1902, Major Charles Bolton (Rod Mullinar) is summoned to a meeting with Lord Kitchener (Alan Cassell). He is told that three officers of the Bushveldt Carbineers—lieutenants Harry Morant (Edward Woodward), Peter Handcock (Bryan Brown) and George Witton (Lewis Fitz-Gerald)—have been arrested and charged with the murder of captured Boers and a German missionary. Explaining ominously that the German Emperor—Wilhelm II—has protested diplomatically about the latter killing, Kitchener asks Major Bolton to appear for the prosecution. To the Major's visible dismay, he is told that witnesses who would help the defence have been sent to India and that the defence counsel is expected to give him no trouble. The defence counsel, Major James Francis Thomas (Jack Thompson) meets Morant, Handcock and Witton the day before he is to represent them in court. He tells them