“Oppenheimer” wins greatest image on the British Academy Movie Awards

Atom bomb epic “Oppenheimer” received seven prizes, together with greatest image, director and actor, on the 77th British Academy Movie Awards on Sunday, cementing its front-runner standing for the Oscars subsequent month.

Gothic fantasia “Poor Issues” took 5 prizes and Holocaust drama “The Zone of Curiosity” received three.

British-born filmmaker Christopher Nolan received his first greatest director BAFTA for “Oppenheimer,” and Irish performer Cillian Murphy received the most effective actor prize for enjoying physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, the daddy of the atomic bomb.

Murphy mentioned he was grateful to play such a “colossally knotty, complicated character.”

Nolan famous that nuclear weapons are “a nihilistic topic and the movie inevitably displays that,” telling the film’s backers: “Thanks for taking up one thing darkish.”

Emma Stone was named greatest actress for enjoying the wild and spirited Bella Baxter in “Poor Issues,” a steampunk-style visible extravaganza that received prizes for visible results, manufacturing design, make-up and hair and costume design.

“Oppenheimer” had a field-leading 13 nominations, however missed out on the report of 9 trophies, set in 1971 by “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Child.”

It received the most effective movie race in opposition to “Poor Issues,” “Killers of the Flower Moon,” “Anatomy of a Fall” and “The Holdovers.” “Oppenheimer” additionally scooped trophies for modifying, cinematography and musical rating, in addition to the most effective supporting actor prize for Robert Downey Jr., who performed Atomic Power Fee head Lewis Strauss.

Da’Vine Pleasure Randolph was named greatest supporting actress for enjoying a boarding faculty cook dinner in “The Holdovers” and mentioned she felt a “duty I do not take evenly” to inform the tales of underrepresented folks like her character Mary.

“Oppenheimer” confronted stiff competitors in what’s extensively thought of a classic 12 months for cinema and an awards season energized by the top of actors’ and writers’ strikes that shut down Hollywood for months.

“The Zone of Curiosity,” a British-produced movie shot in Poland with a largely German solid, was named each greatest British movie and greatest movie not in English — a primary — and in addition took the prize for its sound, which has been described as the actual star of the movie.

Jonathan Glazer’s unsettling drama takes place in a household dwelling simply outdoors the partitions of the Auschwitz dying camp, whose horrors are heard and hinted at, somewhat than seen.

“Partitions aren’t new from earlier than or because the Holocaust, and it appears stark proper now that we must always care about harmless folks being killed in Gaza or Yemen or Mariupol or Israel,” producer James Wilson mentioned. “Thanks for recognizing a movie that asks us to suppose in these areas.”

Ukraine warfare documentary “20 Days in Mariupol,” produced by The Related Press and PBS “Frontline,” received the prize for greatest documentary.

“This isn’t about us,” mentioned filmmaker Mstyslav Chernov, who captured the harrowing actuality of life within the besieged metropolis with an AP workforce. “That is about Ukraine, in regards to the folks of Mariupol.”

Chernov mentioned the story of town and its fall into Russian occupation “is a logo of battle and a logo of religion. Thanks for empowering our voice and let’s simply maintain preventing.”

The awards ceremony, hosted by “Physician Who” star David Tennant — who entered sporting a kilt and sequined high whereas carrying a canine named Bark Ruffalo — was a glitzy, British-accented appetizer for Hollywood’s Academy Awards, carefully watched for hints about who would possibly win on the Oscars on March 10.

The prize for unique screenplay went to French courtroom drama “Anatomy of a Fall.” The movie a couple of lady on trial over the dying of her husband was written by director Justine Triet and her companion, Arthur Harari.

“It is a fiction, and we’re moderately high-quality,” Triet joked.

Wire Jefferson received the tailored screenplay prize for the satirical “American Fiction,” in regards to the struggles of an African American novelist

Jefferson mentioned he hoped the success of the film “perhaps modifications the minds of the people who find themselves in control of greenlighting movies and TV exhibits, permits them to be much less risk-averse.”

Historic epic “Killers of the Flower Moon,” Leonard Bernstein biopic “Maestro,” grief-flecked love story “All of Us Strangers” and class-war dramedy “Saltburn ” all received nothing regardless of a number of nominations.

” Barbie,” one half of 2023’s “Barbenheimer” field workplace juggernaut and the 12 months’s top-grossing movie, additionally got here up empty from 5 nominations. “Barbie” director Greta Gerwig didn’t get a directing nomination for both the BAFTAs or the Oscars, in what was seen by many as a serious snub.

Britain’s movie academy launched modifications to extend the awards’ range in 2020, when no girls had been nominated as greatest director for the seventh 12 months working and all 20 nominees within the lead and supporting performer classes had been white. Nonetheless, Triet was the one lady amongst this 12 months’s six best-director nominees.

The Rising Star award, the one class determined by public vote, went to Mia McKenna-Bruce, star of “How you can Have Intercourse.”

Earlier than the ceremony, nominees, together with Bradley Cooper, Carey Mulligan, Emily Blunt, Rosamund Pike, Ryan Gosling and Ayo Edebiri all walked the crimson carpet at London’s Royal Pageant Corridor, together with presenters Andrew Scott, Cate Blanchett, Idris Elba and David Beckham.

Visitor of honor was Prince William, in his function as president of the British Academy of Movie and Tv Arts. He arrived with out his spouse, Kate, who’s recovering from stomach surgical procedure final month.

The ceremony included musical performances by “Ted Lasso” star Hannah Waddingham, singing “Time After Time,” and Sophie Ellis-Bextor, singing her 2001 hit “Homicide on the Dancefloor,” which shot again up the charts after that includes in “Saltburn.”

Movie curator June Givanni, founding father of the June Givanni PanAfrican Cinema Archive, was honored for excellent British contribution to cinema, whereas actress Samantha Morton acquired the academy’s highest honor, the BAFTA Fellowship.

Morton, who grew up in foster care and youngsters’s houses, mentioned that “illustration issues.”

“The tales we inform, they’ve the facility to vary folks’s lives,” she mentioned. “Movie modified my life, it reworked me, and it led me right here in the present day.”