The gothic fantasy Poor Things (poor creatures) took home five awards and the Holocaust drama The Zone of Interest (Area of interest) win three.
Christopher Nolan took his first BAFTA for best director for Oppenheimer, and Cillian Murphy won the best actor award for playing physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb. Murphy said he was grateful to embody such a colossally complex character.
Emma Stone was named best actress for playing the wild and energetic Bella Baxter in Poor Thingsa visual spectacle of style steampunk which won awards for visual effects, production design, costume design, and makeup and hairstyling.
The competition
Oppenheimer had 13 nominations, but did not break the record of nine trophies, established in 1971 by Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (two men and one destiny).
It won the best film award race against Poor Things, Killers of the Flower Moon (The Moon Killers), Anatomy of a fall (Anatomy of a each) y The Holdovers (Those who stay). Oppenheimer It also won trophies for editing, cinematography and original music, as well as the award for best supporting actor for Robert Downey Jr.
Da’Vine Joy Randolph was named best supporting actress for playing a boarding school cook in The Holdovers and said that she felt a responsibility that she does not take lightly to tell the stories of underrepresented people like her character Mary.
Oppenheimer faced stiff competition in what was widely considered a banner year for film and an awards season energized by the end of the actors’ and writers’ strikes that paralyzed Hollywood for months.
The Zone of Interesta British-produced film filmed in Poland with a mostly German cast, was named best British film and best foreign language film, a combination that was the first time, and also took home the award for best sound, which has been described as the real star of the film.
Jonathan Glazer’s haunting drama unfolds in a family’s home next to the walls of the Auschwitz death camp, whose horrors are heard and hinted at, rather than seen.
“Walls are not new since before or after the Holocaust, and it seems clear at this point that we should be concerned about the deaths of innocent people in Gaza, Yemen, Maripol or Israel,” said producer James Wilson. “Thank you for recognizing a film that asks us to think about those spaces.”
The film about the Ukrainian war 20 Days in Mariupol (20 days in Maripol) produced by The Associated Press and the series Frontline from PBS, won the award for best documentary. “This is not about us,” said filmmaker Mstyslav Chernov, who captured the harrowing reality of life in the besieged city with an AP crew. “It’s about Ukraine, about the people of Maripol.”
Chernov said that the history of the city and its fall into the Russian occupation: “is a symbol of struggle and a symbol of faith.” “Thank you for empowering our voice and let’s keep fighting.”
The ceremony
The awards ceremony, presented by the star of Doctor Who David Tennant, who arrived on stage in a Scottish tartan and sequined blouse while holding a dog named Bark Ruffalo, was a dazzling British-accented appetizer for Hollywood’s Academy Awards. The BAFTAs are being watched closely for clues about who might win at the Oscars on March 10.
The award for best original screenplay went to the French court drama Anatomy of a fall. The film about a woman on trial for the death of her husband was written by director Justine Triet and her partner, Arthur Harari. “She’s a fiction, and we’re doing reasonably well,” Triet joked.
Cord Jefferson won the award for best adapted screenplay for the satirical American Fictionabout the struggles of an African-American novelist
Jefferson said he hoped the film’s success “maybe change the minds of the people who are in charge of green-lighting movies and television shows, allowing them to be less risk-averse.”
The historical pica Killers of the Flower Moon It had nine nominations for the film awards, officially called EE BAFTAs, but went home empty-handed.
There were also snubs for the biopic about conductor Leonard Bernstein Maestro, which had seven nominations, but did not win any awards. Neither did the love story dotted with pain All of Us Strangers (We are all strangers), with six nominations, and the class war dramedy Saltburn, with five.
Barbie, half summer encounter Barbenheimer of 2023 and the highest-grossing film of the year, also went home empty-handed after receiving five nominations. The director of Barbie, Greta Gerwig did not obtain a nomination in the directing section for either the BAFTAs or the Oscars, in what was considered by many to be a major snub.
The British Film Academy introduced changes to increase the diversity of the awards in 2020, when no woman was nominated for best director for the seventh year in a row and all 20 nominees in the acting categories were white. However, Triet was the only woman among this year’s six best director nominees.
Other awards
The rising actor award, the only category decided by public vote, went to Mia McKenna-Bruce, star of How to Have Sex (How to have sex).
Ahead of the ceremony, nominees including Bradley Cooper, Carey Mulligan, Emily Blunt, Rosamund Pike, Ryan Gosling and Ayo Edebiri walked the red carpet at London’s Royal Festival Hall, alongside presenters Andrew Scott, Cate Blanchett , Idirs Elba and David Beckham.
The guest of honor was Prince William, in his role as president of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts. He arrived without his wife, Catalina, who is recovering from abdominal surgery she underwent last month.
The ceremony included musical performances by the star Ted Lasso Hannah Waddingham, cantando Time After Timeand Sophie Ellis-Bextor, who performed her 2001 hit “Murder on the Dancefloor,” which returned to the charts after appearing on Saltburn.
Film curator June Givanni, founder of the June Givanni Pan-African Film Archive, was honored for her outstanding British contribution to cinema, while actress Samantha Morton received the academy’s highest honour, the BAFTA Fellowship.
Morton, who grew up in foster homes and children’s institutions, said, “Representation matters.”
“The stories we tell have the power to change people’s lives,” he said. “Cinema changed my life, transformed me and brought me here.
“I dedicate this award to all the children in care, or who have been in care, who did not survive.”
FUENTE: AP
