The fifth annual film score competition run by Tropfest and APRA AMCOS comes under fire for controversial film choice.

A short film selected for this year’s APRA Tropscore Competition, which features a husband burying his wife alive, has been dropped from the annual composition prize after a successful social media campaign to ban the film for its depictions of domestic violence.

Jointly run by the world’s largest short film festival, Tropfest, and Australia’s copyright and royalties body, APRA AMCOS, the Tropscore Competition invites composers to score a specific film, with the winning soundtrack receiving a public performance during the Sydney-based festival in December. For 2015’s competition Michael Noonan’s film Remote was selected, which was a Tropfest finalist in 2013. A scoreless version of the film was made available for entrants to download from the competition website, however many took to social media to express their opposition to Remote being selected for the competition.

Intended as a black comedy, Noonan’s controversial film depicts a man driving into the desert, before hurriedly searching for the remote location of a recent burial. After digging up what appears to...