A David-and-Goliath battle between a low budget film set in Laos and an extravagant Hollywood production of The Great Gatsby ended with the giant victorious at Australia's Academy Awards, the Aactas

Baz Luhrmann's blockbuster, filmed entirely in Sydney studios with computer graphics helping to create the F Scott Fitzgerald story's Long Island and New York backdrops, took six of the top prizes on 30 January, including best film, director, and adapted screenplay for Luhrmann and long-time collaborator Craig Pearce. This brought its tally to 13 following its sweep of the craft awards announced two days earlier at the country's top annual film and TV awards.

In the television categories, Jane Campion's quirky crime series Top of the Lake, a four nation co-production set in rural New Zealand, emerged triumphant as best telefeature or miniseries. Nine Network's story of the clash of media titans Frank and Kerry Packer and Rupert Murdoch, Power Games: The Packer-Murdoch Story, collected three TV drama prizes (for best direction and actors Lachy Hulme and Luke Ford as Packer father and son); and the second season of the ABC's Redfern Now, a groundbreaking series set in and around Sydney's biggest indigenous community, held its head aloft as best TV drama series.

Claudia Karvan brought more kudos to the ABC as best TV drama lead actress in thirty-and-fortysomething series The Time of Our Lives, and Kat Stewart reeled in a best lead actress prize for Network Ten's popular comedy-drama Offspring, with screenwriter Debra Oswald picking up the writing prize for one of its episodes. In a decision likely to produce sobbing in the Seven Network's corridors, Ten's Masterchef: the Professionals shoved aside its rival, My Kitchen Rules, for top reality show.

Luhrmann's exuberantly stylised adaptation of one of America's favourite novels scooped three of the top film acting prizes, with absent Hollywood star Leonardo DiCaprio anointed for his role as party-throwing 1920s tycoon Jay Gatsby, while Joel Edgerton's portrayal of macho millionaire Tom Buchanan won him best supporting actor. Newcomer Elizabeth Debicki's supporting actress trophy for her role as glamorous society girl Jordan Baker arrived early during the ceremony, giving a good idea as to where the night was headed.

However, the big-earning but critically divisive Gatsby was beaten in one major category, with Britain's Carey Mulligan pipped to the best lead actress trophy by Australian Rose Byrne. Byrne played a domestic violence victim who discovers Jesus in The Turning, a three-hour compendium of short films adapted from a story collection by author Tim Winton. Byrne appeared in only one of the 18 segments.

The Rocket, about a cursed boy who competes in a village rocket competition, was the second most nominated film with 12 nods to Gatsby's 14. But the smaller film – set and filmed in Laos using a Laotian cast and boasting prizes from international festivals Tribeca and Berlin – only came away with best original screenplay for its writer-director Kim Mordaunt, a category in which Gatsby wasn't eligible. Mordaunt said he was surprised that the film, which features villagers displaced by a dam project, had been banned in Laos, but added that hydroelectricity was "very political" there at the moment.

Despite their huge differences in style and budget, Gatsby and The Rocket exemplified a trend in Australian cinema, as it moves away from the desert epics and gaudy suburban comedies for which it was once renowned in favour of international or foreign stories that few would guess were Australian. Foreign locations even extended to the best documentary, Red Obsession, a film about China's effect on the French fine wine industry narrated by Russell Crowe. Luhrmann told reporters the diversity of Australian films was a sign of the industry's maturity and showed "how nimble we are as a creative hub".

Jacki Weaver received the Raymond Longford Award in recognition of her long career while the Byron Kennedy award was given to an organisation for the first time, the Australian Cinematographers Society. Best TV comedy went to Please Like Me, and the ABC's Shaun Micallef took best comedy performance for Mad As Hell.

Gallery: Cate Blanchett and Geoffrey Rush on the red carpet

• This article was amended on 3 February 2014. An earlier version said best TV comedy went to Mad as Hell