The international scope of the Bafta Film Awards means special attention is paid in the UK to the only two categories reserved for British films. Screen assesses the contenders vying for nominations.
Of all the film awards mounted annually by national film bodies around the world, none are more aligned than the ones presented by the US and UK academies. Among the 23 awards handed out each year at the Bafta Film Awards for features, 19 have directly equivalent categories at the Oscars — and in recent years there has been remarkable overlap in the winners of these prizes. Last year, for example, the wins coincided in 15 categories, and the year before in 18.
The four prizes that are distinct to Bafta and have no parallel at the Oscars are for casting, rising star (winner chosen by public vote) plus two categories reserved for local achievement: outstanding British film and outstanding debut by a British writer, director or producer. Unsurprisingly, these two latter categories — giving local films a path to victory without having to compete with well-resourced campaigns from major US titles — command a lot of attention in the home market.
Outstanding British film, which saw the number of nominees expand from six to 10 in 2021, always presents a fascinating snapshot of UK film — with the nominees reflecting the particular enthusiasms of Bafta’s large opt-in British chapter, as well as the tastes of a jury. The top five titles in round-one voting are automatically nominated, and then the jury selects another five nominees from the rest of the longlist.
Last year, the 10 nominees straddled the waterfront of British filmmaking from James Bond to low-budget debuts. No Time To Die, House Of Gucci, Belfast, Cyrano and Last Night In Soho were the presumed top five choices of the British chapter. And then indie films After Love, Ali & Ava, Boiling Point, Passing and Everybody’s Talking About Jamie were likewise nominated, and were the presumed jury picks from the rest of the longlist. Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast went on to win the award.
This year presents a similarly fascinating mix of contenders, including a number of titles that could make waves across multiple categories at the Baftas — and, in fact, Oscars.
Given the acclaim that has greeted The Banshees Of Inisherin — including Venice Film Festival wins for Martin McDonagh in screenplay and Colin Farrell in actor — it would be remarkable if the dark comedy drama failed to score an outstanding British film Bafta nomination. Writer/director McDonagh and his producers Graham Broadbent and Peter Czernin have good form in the category: together, they were nominated for In Bruges, Seven Psychopaths and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, winning for the latter in 2018.
The Searchlight Pictures and Film4-backed feature is being positioned across multiple categories, and is expected to deliver a slew of nominations. So far, Banshees looks like the British film to beat.
Giving it a run for its money, however, could be another Searchlight title: Empire Of Light, written and directed by Sam Mendes, and produced by Mendes and Pippa Harris. This personal film, which also offers a love letter to cinema, is set on the English south coast in the early 1980s, and weaves in a tender romance with perspectives on both mental illness and the racial tensions of the era. Olivia Colman, Micheal Ward, Toby Jones and Colin Firth could all figure in the acting categories — and Empire Of Light is considered a contender across the board, including for best film, director, screenplay and craft.
Titles directed by Mendes have won outstanding British film twice before: Skyfall in 2013 and 1917 in 2020.
Fresh blood
Oliver Hermanus lacks the Bafta track record of both McDonagh and Mendes — in fact, he has never been nominated, although his last film Moffie was an outstanding British debut nominee in 2021 for producer and co-writer Jack Sidey (South Africa-born Hermanus was not eligible for this award, and Moffie was not his debut feature).
This year, Hermanus directs a potential major Bafta contender with Living, adapted by Nobel Prize-winning novelist Kazuo Ishiguro from Akira Kurosawa’s 1952 film Ikiru, and produced by Stephen Woolley and Elizabeth Karlsen for Number 9 Films. Bill Nighy stars as a reserved London County Council bureaucrat who is shaken from his life of seeming weary resignation by a medical diagnosis.
Living has impressed audiences during its sweep of major festivals this year — including Sundance, Venice, Telluride, Toronto and BFI London — and has proved a notable box-office hit in the UK for Lionsgate, with $4.2m (£3.4m) to date. Films produced by Woolley have secured an outstanding British Bafta win and nominations before: a win for The Crying Game in 1993 and nominations for Backbeat in 1995 and Made In Dagenham in 2011.
If The Banshees Of Inisherin, Empire Of Light and Living look set to be the three big beasts of the category, also prowling nearby is The Wonder, directed by Chile’s Sebastian Lelio, and adapted from the Emma Donoghue novel by Lelio, Donoghue and Alice Birch. The amply credentialed film, set in Ireland in 1862, stars Florence Pugh as an English nurse tasked with verifying a seeming local miracle: a child (newcomer Kila Lord Cassidy) who has been fasting for months, surviving on “manna from heaven”.
The Netflix-backed title played Telluride, Toronto and BFI London film festivals, and earned 12 nominations at the British Independent Film Awards (Bifa), winning for Matthew Herbert’s score.
The big winner at the Bifas this year was Aftersun, the debut feature of writer/director Charlotte Wells, and starring Normal People’s Paul Mescal as a young father taking his 11-year-old daughter on holiday to a Turkish beach resort.
Aftersun won seven awards at the Bifas, including the top prize of best British independent film, which is determined by Bifa’s full voting membership — auguring well for its chances in Bafta’s outstanding British film category.
Georgia Oakley’s Blue Jean, likewise had a good showing at the Bifas, winning for lead performance (Rosy McEwen), supporting performance (Kerrie Hayes), debut screenwriter (Oakley) and casting (Shaheen Baig). This Newcastle-set drama, playing out against the enactment of the UK’s homophobic Section 28 legislation in 1988, looks a likely jury pick for the Bafta — just as long as it makes the longlist in the British chapter vote.
That longlist has been reduced from 20 to 15 titles this year. It is good news if you are on it — you have a higher chance of a nomination. But it is tough for films that are frantically jostling for the attention of voters.
Good Luck To You, Leo Grande — which received a best British independent film Bifa nomination alongside Aftersun, Blue Jean, Living and The Wonder — has a strong chance of Bafta nominations. The story of a widower (Emma Thompson) seeking sexual fulfilment for the first time in her life with a sex worker (Daryl McCormack) is written by Katy Brand and directed by Sophie Hyde (Animals). It has been winning fans since premiering at Sundance, and Lionsgate steered it to more than $1.3m (£1.1m) at the UK and Ireland box office.
Lesley Manville, a respected actress whose leading screen roles have hitherto tended to be on television, steps into the big-screen limelight in Mrs Harris Goes To Paris, adapted from the Paul Gallico novella. Manville received supporting actress Oscar and Bafta nominations for Phantom Thread in 2018, and now has her best shot at the same for leading actress, while multiple Oscar winner Jenny Beavan should receive awards attention for her costumes, which play a central role in the film’s storyline. The Universal Pictures-backed film has proved a hit in multiple territories, including North America, UK-Ireland and Australia, and had reached $28m worldwide at press time.
If the above eight titles are all nominated for the outstanding British film Bafta, that leaves only a couple of slots open. The Son, directed by Florian Zeller and adapted from his own stage play by Zeller and Christopher Hampton, could follow the path blazed by the duo’s The Father — which won the actor and adapted screenplay Baftas in 2021, losing outstanding British film to Promising Young Woman.
Similarly, The Lost King comes from the creative team behind Philomena, which in 2014 won the adapted screenplay Bafta for Steve Coogan and Jeff Pope, and was nominated for outstanding British film, losing to Gravity.
Inspiring selection
The Swimmers — the second feature from My Brother The Devil director Sally El Hosaini — is based on the true story of Syrian sisters Sara and Yusra Mardini. Co-scripted by El Hosaini and Jack Thorne, the refugee drama opened Toronto and is an inspirational story of courage and determination.
Roald Dahl’s Matilda The Musical proved a riotous crowdpleaser when it opened the BFI London Film Festival in October, and is a UK and Ireland box-office hit for Sony. Directed by the original stage musical’s Matthew Warchus, the film’s strong cast — including Emma Thompson, Lashana Lynch, Stephen Graham and Andrea Riseborough — could help position the film as worthy of consideration by awards voters.
Joining The Wonder are three more period films with strong female characters — Frances O’Connor’s Emily starring Emma Mackey, Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover with Emma Corrin, and Lena Dunham’s Catherine Called Birdy with Bella Ramsey — that will be vying for inclusion in the outstanding British film category.
Set in the more-recent past are comedy whodunnit See How They Run, love-triangle drama My Policeman, and comic tale of unlikely sporting hero The Phantom Of The Open. The jury could cast its eyes in the direction of any one of these titles, as long as they make the longlist in the chapter vote. The same is true of Alex Garland’s Men, starring Jessie Buckley and Rory Kinnear in a multiple role — although the film’s genre positioning, adjacent to horror, may prove divisive with voters.
Mark Jenkin won the outstanding British debut Bafta in 2020 with Bait, and was nominated for outstanding British film. He will be hoping to repeat the latter honour with his folk-horror follow-up Enys Men.
Peter Strickland’s Flux Gourmet found plenty of favour with Bifa voters, who nominated the film in seven categories and awarded it the win for best sound, although none of Strickland’s previous four features have earned any Bafta nominations.
UK indies that might find more favour are Agnieszka Smoczynska’s The Silent Twins and Jim Archer’s Brian And Charles. Premiering respectively at Cannes and Sundance, they both showcase joint lead performances: one with Letitia Wright and Tamara Lawrance as twins who for many years speak only to each other; the other with David Earl and Chris Hayward as an inventor and his robot that comes miraculously to life.
In total, 57 films have qualified for the outstanding British film Bafta, including admired documentaries such as My Old School and Eric Ravilious: Drawn To War. Despite the relatively capacious number of nominees the category now offers, it will — as always — be a tough fight to land a nomination.
Outstanding British Debut frontrunners
Strong titles vie for jury-determined honour
Last year Jeymes Samuel scooped the Bafta for outstanding debut by a British writer, director or producer with his Black western The Harder They Fall — edging out his fellow nominees from Boiling Point, After Love, Passing and Keyboard Fantasies.
This category is determined by a jury, which meets multiple times in the year, discusses all the eligible titles at length, and then determines the longlist, nominees and winner.
Second-guessing the preferences of a jury is a fool’s errand — in 2017 this category’s jury failed to nominate one of the year’s best debuts, Francis Lee’s God’s Own Country — but it would be pretty astonishing if Charlotte Wells’ Aftersun failed to secure a nomination this year, and the same might be said of Georgia Oakley’s Blue Jean.
The Brian And Charles team of David Earl and Chris Hayward were nominated for the debut screenwriter Bifa, and the Bafta jury may honour them alongside director Jim Archer and producer Rupert Majendie, all making their feature debuts.
Similarly, See How They Run comes from a pair of UK creatives — director Tom George (This Country) and screenwriter Mark Chappell (Glued) — who forged their careers in TV comedy and now make their big-screen debuts.
With a background in television, director Lee Haven Jones and writer Roger Williams will be hoping their Welsh-language indie horror The Feast can sneak a genre element into this category.
Competition will come from genial Netflix indie drama I Used To Be Famous — for the directing, writing and producing team of Eddie Sternberg, Zak Klein and Collie McCarthy.
Born in Northern Ireland, actress Antonia Campbell-Hughes makes her writing/directing feature debut with It Is In Us All, starring Cosmo Jarvis as a man who visits Ireland to take possession of a house he has inherited from his aunt, and then forms a bond with a teenage boy who crashed into his hire car.
Malachi Smyth likewise makes his writing/directing feature debut with musical-inflected The Score, starring Will Poulter and Johnny Flynn as criminals awaiting a contact at a secluded roadside cafe, with Naomi Ackie as the waitress who plays a pivotal role in the ensuing drama.
Documentaries usually pop up among the nominees for outstanding British debut — with recent years including Maiden, A Cambodian Spring, Kingdom Of Us, plus last year’s Keyboard Fantasies. Vying for inclusion this year will be Jono McLeod for My Old School and Peter Day for Off The Rails.
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