Nominations for the 77th Annual BAFTA Awards Announced
Outside of the Academy Awards, the British Academy Film Awards are among the most relevant and cherished in the film industry. Many of this year’s nominations align with 2023’s most thriving films, along with a few surprise inclusions and snubs.
While Barbie was snubbed for Best Film and Best Director, it was represented in five categories with Best Original Screenplay (a major win compared to it being filed under Best Adapted Screenplay by the Oscars), Best Actress (Margot Robbie), Best Supporting Actor (Ryan Gosling), Best Costume Design, and Best Production Design.
Killers of the Flower Moon may have decreased momentum as director Martin Scorsese and lead actress Lilly Gladstone, respectively, were snubbed for Best Director and Best Actress.
Cheers to the French film Anatomy of a Fall ascending after winning Non-English Language Film and Best Screenplay at the Golden Globes. Now, with the BAFTA, it has seven nominations, including Best Film and Best Director for Justine Triet.
Actress Sandra Hüller has two acting nominations for Anatomy of a Fall and The Zone of Interest. If this luck reigns again at the Oscars, she’ll be in the rare league of actresses who received two nominations for separate films in the same year (Holly Hunter, Cate Blanchett, Scarlett Johansson).
All of Us Strangers and Saltburn, courtesy of Best Original Screenplay winner Emerald Fennell, also have surprising leads, with six and five nominations, respectively. (Barry Keoghan’s iconic scenes in Saltburn have now been gleefully vindicated by U.K. Academy voters and film critics.)
Of course, Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer leads with thirteen nominations, only one short of when the BAFTA longlists were announced. This is a remarkable turn of events for Nolan, whose films have long been successful with the BAFTA but has never won an award himself. 2024 is prime to be Nolan’s year. Best Picture appears to be a slam dunk after its victory at the Golden Globes and Critics Choice Awards.
Is there still hope for Yorgos Lanthimos’s excelsior achievement, Poor Things, which now has eleven nominations? In another year, this would be a thrilling wild card for Best Film in the vein of The Shape of Water (2017) and Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022).
