‘All Quiet on the Western Front’ leads BAFTA nominations
LONDON — The visceral World War I German-language drama “All Quiet on the Western Front” garnered a field-leading 14 nominations Thursday for the British Academy Film Awards, while genre-bending comedies “The Banshees of Inisherin“ and “Everything Everywhere All at Once” were each nominated in 10 categories.
“All Quiet,” an unflinching adaptation of the classic antiwar novel about life and death in the trenches, is up for awards including best film and director for Edward Berger. Its tally of nominations is the highest ever for a film not in the English language.
Martin McDonagh’s Irish tragicomedy “Banshees” has nominations including for best picture, director and actor for Colin Farrell. Nominations for madcap metaverse adventure “Everything Everywhere” include nods for co-directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert — known jointly as “Daniels” — and an actress nomination for Michelle Yeoh.
Baz Lurhmann’s flamboyant musical biopic “Elvis” is up for nine awards, including best picture.
Winners will be announced Feb. 19 at a ceremony in London.
The nominations help cement “Banshees” and “Everything Everywhere” as awards-season favorites, following momentum-building wins at the Golden Globes and multiple nominations for Screen Actors Guild Awards.
The actors, good friends in real life, disagree about how best to live life and what leaving a legacy really means.
The BAFTA best picture nominees are “All Quiet on the Western Front,” “The Banshees of Inisherin,” “Elvis,” “Everything Everywhere All at Once” and Todd Field’s symphonic psychodrama “Tár.”
The 10 nominees for outstanding British film, a separate category, include Charlotte Wells’ 1990s family drama “Aftersun,” Sam Mendes’ semi-autobiographical “Empire of Light” and Sophie Hyde’s smart sex comedy “Good Luck to You, Leo Grande.”
Britain’s film academy introduced changes to increase the awards’ diversity in 2020, when no women were nominated as best director for the seventh year running and all 20 nominees in the lead and supporting performer categories were white.
The voting process was rejigged to add a “long-list” round in the voting before the selection of the final nominees that are voted on by the academy membership of several thousand industry professionals. For the best film prize, academy members choose a 15-film long list that all members must watch before voting for the winner.
The actor is delighted she can finally be a little goofy on screen. She’s even happier that audiences accept her being funny.
This year there are 11 female directors up for awards across all categories, including documentary and animated films. But just one of the main director nominees is female: Gina Prince-Bythewood for “The Woman King.” The other nominees are Berger, McDonagh, Kwan and Scheinert, Field and Korean filmmaker Park Chan-wook for “Decision to Leave.”
Unlike some awards, including U.K. music prizes the Brits, the BAFTAs have retained separate male and female acting categories, though that is under review.
Lead actress contenders are Yeoh; Cate Blanchett for “Tár”; Viola Davis for “The Woman King”; Danielle Deadwyler for “Till”; Ana de Armas for “Blonde”; and Emma Thompson for “Good Luck to You, Leo Grande.”
The actor category pits Farrell against Austin Butler for “Elvis”; Brendan Fraser for “The Whale”; Daryl McCormack for “Good Luck to You, Leo Grande”; Paul Mescal for “Aftersun”; and Bill Nighy for “Living.”
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