‘Oppenheimer’ wins 7 prizes, including best picture, at British Academy Film Awards

LONDON — Atom bomb epic Oppenheimer gained seven prizes, together with finest 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 gained three.

British-born filmmaker Christopher Nolan gained his first finest director BAFTA for Oppenheimer, and Irish performer Cillian Murphy gained the perfect actor prize for taking part in physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, the daddy of the atomic bomb.

Murphy mentioned he was grateful to play such a “colossally knotty, advanced 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 finest actress for taking part in the wild and spirited Bella Baxter in “Poor Issues,” a steampunk-style visible extravaganza that gained 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 file of 9 trophies, set in 1971 by Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Child.

It gained the perfect movie race towards 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 perfect supporting actor prize for Robert Downey Jr., who performed Atomic Power Fee head Lewis Strauss.

Da’Vine Pleasure Randolph was named finest supporting actress for taking part in a boarding faculty prepare dinner in The Holdovers and mentioned she felt a “accountability I do not take frivolously” to inform the tales of underrepresented folks like her character Mary.

Oppenheimer confronted stiff competitors in what’s broadly thought of a classic yr 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 forged, was named each finest British movie and finest 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 house simply outdoors the partitions of the Auschwitz dying camp, whose horrors are heard and hinted at, slightly than seen.

“Partitions aren’t new from earlier than or because the Holocaust, and it appears stark proper now that we should 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,” gained the prize for finest 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 the 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 combating.”

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

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

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

Twine Jefferson gained 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 adjustments the minds of the people who find themselves accountable for greenlighting movies and TV reveals, 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 gained nothing regardless of a number of nominations.

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

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

The Rising Star award, the one class determined by public vote, went to Mia McKenna-Bruce, star of Methods to 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 purple 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 belly 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 obtained the academy’s highest honor, the BAFTA Fellowship.

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

“The tales we inform, they’ve the ability to alter folks’s lives,” she mentioned. “Movie modified my life, it reworked me, and it led me right here as we speak.”