The Shape Of Water and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri lead this year's BAFTA film noms
Awards-granting bodies tend to love movies about the love of movies (See also: La La Land), which helps account for the love currently being heaped upon The Shape Of Water. (It’s also a good film, if not one of our favorites of the year.) Either that, or the members of the British Academy are really into human-fish sex, because Guillermo del Toro’s interspecies romance—which just won a Golden Globe for Best Director this past Sunday—leads the nominations for this year’s BAFTA Film Awards.
Earlier today, the BAFTAs nominated The Shape Of Water for 12 awards, including Best Film, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Director. Following closely behind are Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri and Darkest Hour with nine nominations apiece, representing the BAFTA-friendly topics of British people—director Martin McDonagh holds dual British and Irish citizenship—commenting on American culture and Winston Churchill. Dunkirk’s eight nominations are similarly expected given its subject matter and near-universal praise, while Blade Runner 2049, which also scored eight nominations, has neither a British director or major British stars, which kind of throws off our whole conceit here.
Anyway, Steven Spielberg’s The Post, a presumed awards-season juggernaut whose awards prospects have been mixed thus far, was shut out of the BAFTAs entirely, presumably because of the utter American-ness of its subject matter. Also shut out? Female directors, who are completely absent from the all-male Best Director lineup. (Paging Natalie Portman.) The Outstanding Debut category, meanwhile, recognized two women directors: Kingdom Of Us’s Lucy Cohen and I Am Not A Witch’s Rungano Nyoni. Similarly, with a few notable exceptions—Get Out’s Daniel Kaluuya, who hails from London, is nominated for two awards, Octavia Spencer and Tessa Thompson for one each—the majority of nominees across the major categories are white. With new diversity guidelines coming in to place next year, though, that is (hopefully) poised to change.
The BAFTA film awards will take place in London on February 18, hosted by Absolutely Fabulous’ Joanna Lumley, who takes over for longtime host Stephen Fry. A full list of nominees is below.
BEST FILM
CALL ME BY YOUR NAME Emilie Georges, Luca Guadagnino, Marco Morabito, Peter Spears
DARKEST HOUR Tim Bevan, Lisa Bruce, Eric Fellner, Anthony McCarten, Douglas Urbanski
DUNKIRK Christopher Nolan, Emma Thomas
THE SHAPE OF WATER Guillermo del Toro, J. Miles Dale
THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI Graham Broadbent, Pete Czernin, Martin McDonagh
OUTSTANDING BRITISH FILM
DARKEST HOUR Joe Wright, Tim Bevan, Lisa Bruce, Eric Fellner, Anthony McCarten, Douglas Urbanski
THE DEATH OF STALIN Armando Iannucci, Kevin Loader, Laurent Zeitoun, Yann Zenou, Ian Martin, David Schneider
GOD’S OWN COUNTRY Francis Lee, Manon Ardisson, Jack Tarling
LADY MACBETH William Oldroyd, Fodhla Cronin O’Reilly, Alice Birch
PADDINGTON 2 Paul King, David Heyman, Simon Farnaby
THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI Martin McDonagh, Graham Broadbent, Pete Czernin
OUTSTANDING DEBUT BY A BRITISH WRITER, DIRECTOR OR PRODUCER
THE GHOUL Gareth Tunley (Writer/Director/Producer), Jack Healy Guttman & Tom Meeten (Producers)
I AM NOT A WITCH Rungano Nyoni (Writer/Director), Emily Morgan (Producer)
JAWBONE Johnny Harris (Writer/Producer), Thomas Napper (Director)
KINGDOM OF US Lucy Cohen (Director)
LADY MACBETH Alice Birch (Writer), William Oldroyd (Director), Fodhla Cronin O’Reilly (Producer)
FILM NOT IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
ELLE Paul Verhoeven, Saïd Ben Saïd
FIRST THEY KILLED MY FATHER Angelina Jolie, Rithy Panh
THE HANDMAIDEN Park Chan-wook, Syd Lim
LOVELESS Andrey Zvyagintsev, Alexander Rodnyansky
THE SALESMAN Asghar Farhadi, Alexandre Mallet-Guy
DOCUMENTARY
CITY OF GHOSTS Matthew Heineman
I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO Raoul Peck
ICARUS Bryan Fogel, Dan Cogan
AN INCONVENIENT SEQUEL Bonni Cohen, Jon Shenk
JANE Brett Morgen