Bafta Film Awards voters who participated in round-one voting to help determine the longlists announced last Friday (January 3) may be disappointed by what happens next: in a couple of the main categories, juries now take over to determine nominations.
Naturally, this invites speculation as to which titles those juries – for outstanding British film and best documentary – will nominate. A jury also takes over in casting.
For outstanding British film, all voters were automatically eligible to vote in round one this year, and those votes yielded a longlist of 15 titles. Of those 15, the five films attracting the highest votes are automatically nominated. A jury will choose five more titles from the remaining 10.
Conclave and Kneecap are the two UK titles that also made it onto the best film longlist (alongside US and French titles such as Anora, Emilia Perez and Wicked), so it’s reasonable to assume the pair are among the five films that came highest in the votes for outstanding British film, and are thus automatically nominated.
The other three films in the top quintet might be Blitz (which appears on six other longlists), Civil War (also longlisted for original screenplay and four craft categories) and Gladiator 2 (listed nine times in total).
If that’s the case, there are now tense days for the other 10 film teams, who will be trying to predict how an outstanding British film jury might behave. In the past, these juries have tended to be drawn to critically acclaimed independent films, festival prizewinners, and films that have flourished at the British Independent Film Awards (Bifas).
This year, there are not so many of those for the jury to consider. Kneecap was the big winner at the Bifas, but is probably already nominated here. Rungano Nyoni won Bifa’s directing prize but her film – On Becoming A Guinea Fowl – did not make this Bafta longlist so is not in contention. Sandhya Suri’s Santosh won the screenplay Bifa, but likewise failed to make this Bafta longlist.
Auteurs return
Andrea Arnold’s Fish Tank won the best British film Bafta in 2010, when it was called the Alexander Korda Award and determined by a different procedure, including a jury selection of winner; her American Honey was also nominated in the British film category in 2017, losing to I, Daniel Blake. She is longlisted this time for Bird.
Veteran auteur Mike Leigh is longlisted for Hard Truths – and the film found favour with the performance chapter, since it’s longlisted for both leading and supporting actress (for Marianne Jean-Baptiste and Michele Austin).
But Hard Truths didn’t make any other Bafta longlists including two categories – original screenplay and casting – where it might have been expected to flourish. Leigh has been previously nominated in Bafta’s British film category five times.
Hard Truths is one of six Studiocanal titles on the outstanding British film longlist this year, alongside Back To Black, Paddington In Peru, We Live In Time, The Outrun and Wicked Little Letters. All may require jury enthusiasm to achieve a nomination.
Both of the previous Paddington films scored a nomination in this category, but a nomination for Paddington In Peru is by no means guaranteed – the newly introduced children’s and family film category, which is a fully juried process, did not longlist the hit sequel.
Sam Taylor-Johnson’s Back To Black is longlisted for leading actress (Marisa Abela), while both John Crowley’s We Live In Time and Thea Sharrock’s Wicked Little Letters did not make any Bafta longlist apart from outstanding British film. Back To Black and Wicked Little Letters proved sizeable box-office hits in 2024, grossing £12.3m and £9.6m respectively at UK and Ireland cinemas, while We Live In Time opened on January 1 with a robust £2.8m in five days.
Still, Studiocanal’s hottest prospect for a nomination in this category is perhaps Nora Fingscheidt’s The Outrun, which made five longlists in total including for director, adapted screenplay and leading actress (Saoirse Ronan). In fact, The Outrun – which grossed £2.3m at UK and Ireland cinemas – may already be nominated by virtue of being among the top five titles in round-one voting.
Studiocanal also distributed Ellen Kuras’s Lee – starring and produced by Kate Winslet – on behalf of Sky Cinema. Lee made four Bafta longlists in total, including for Kuras in director, Winslet in leading actress, and adapted screenplay. A nomination for outstanding British film seems likely for Lee, which has proved a hit with UK and Ireland cinema audiences, grossing £4.4m.
Lionsgate has strong expectations of a nomination for Love Lies Bleeding, Rose Glass’ follow-up to Saint Maud, which was nominated in this category in 2021 (losing to Promising Young Woman). A Sundance 2024 premiere, Love Lies Bleeding achieved 12 Bifa nominations, winning for cinematography, and could find favour with the jury.
In 2006, Wallace & Gromit: The Curse Of The Were-Rabbit won the British film Bafta, and Chicken Run was nominated in 2001. Both were jointly directed by Nick Park, who this time has Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl in contention. The sequel also made longlists for animated film and children’s and family film.
Casting jury
Casting is the third category where a jury now takes over – votes by the casting chapter having yielded a longlist of 10. This category was introduced for the 2020 Bafta Film Awards, and was wholly juried in its first year, when Rocks won, and when three of the five nominated titles were UK or Irish films (also Calm With Horses and Promising Young Woman).
Last year, two UK titles (All Of Us Strangers and How To Have Sex) achieved casting nominations, losing to The Holdovers. This year, the UK and Irish longlisted contenders are Back To Black, Blitz, Conclave and Kneecap.
No title is automatically nominated, and the jury has free rein. Sean Baker’s Anora is a well-cast film, and casting directors longlisted it, evidently bearing no grudge that Baker cast the film himself (with additional casting by fellow producer Samantha Quan, who is his wife).
The other titles longlisted for casting are The Apprentice, The Brutalist, A Complete Unknown, Emilia Perez and Wicked, and jury preference is very hard to call.
Outstanding British debut
Outstanding British debut and children’s and family film are both fully juried categories. Last year, the jury for the former overlooked widely admired scripted indie films such as Rye Lane, Scrapper and Femme, and nominated three documentaries – Blue Bag Life, Is There Anybody Out There? and Bobi Wine: The People’s President – alongside How To Have Sex and Earth Mama (which won).
This year, there will be a maximum of two documentaries nominated for outstanding British debut, since there are only two on the shortlist: Pinny Grylls and Sam Crane’s Grand Theft Hamlet and Chloe Abrahams’ The Taste Of Mango.
Films set outside the UK have made a strong showing on the longlist: in addition to Chris Andrews’ Ireland-set Bring Them Down, there are Farah Nabulsi’s Palestinian drama The Teacher, plus three films set in India – Dev Patel’s Monkey Man, Sandhya Suri’s Santosh and Karan Kandhari’s Sister Midnight.
Directors, writers and producers are all eligible for this award, and the longlist announcement does not make clear who the nominees would be in each case, if a film is nominated.
The scripted features set in the UK are Kneecap, Luna Carmoon’s Hoard and Laura Carreira’s On Falling, which won the best director Silver Seashell at San Sebastian and the Sutherland Award for first feature at the BFI London Film Festival. On Falling qualifies for the Bafta award by virtue of festival play, despite a lack of a timely UK theatrical release, thanks to a new qualification rule introduced by Bafta. If the film wins the award, we can expect more teams to enter festival-qualified films in future.
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