Winners and losers at the 2025 baftas | thearticle

The main problem with the BAFTAs, which took place this week, is that, too often, they give too many awards to mediocre British films. In 2015 the jury gave three awards to the Stephen

Hawking biopic, _The Theory of Everything_; in 2019 _The Favourite _won six awards; in 2020 _1917_, directed by Sam Mendes, did even better, winning seven awards; and in 2023 _The Banshees

of Inisherin_, Martin McDonagh’s most disappointing film, won four awards. This year, it was the turn of _Conclave_, the adaptation of Robert Harris’s melodrama about the election of a new

Pope, which also won four awards. Arguably it should have won just two: one for The Best Use of Umbrellas in a Feature Film and one for The Most Predictable Ending in a So-called Thriller.

   Perhaps most striking are the excellent films which get overlooked at the BAFTAs. In 2020, for example, Tarantino’s _Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood_, _The Joker_, Bong Joon-Ho’s

_Parasite_ and Scorsese’s underrated classic, _The Irishman_, all got nominated for Best Film and Best Direction but lost out to _1917_. In 2019 _Jo Jo_ _Rabbit _didn’t even get nominated

for Best Film or Best Direction at the BAFTAs. This year, the superb film about Bob Dylan, _A Complete Unknown,_ won no awards at all at the BAFTAs, not even Best Actor for Timothée Chalamet

as Dylan or Best Supporting Actor for Edward Norton as Pete Seeger (though both were at least nominated). Meanwhile _Emilia Perez_, the extraordinary musical about Mexican drug cartels,

only won two awards, including one for Film Not in the English Language. It is also interesting to note that in the last ten years, only two BAFTA Best Film winners ( _ Nomadland _ and _

Oppenheimer _ , neither of them British films) went on to win the Best Picture Oscar. None of the above-mentioned British films which won Best Film at the BAFTAs went on to win the Oscar for

Best Film.  On a more positive note, it has been an interesting year for films shortlisted for the major awards. Last year, the year of Barbenheimer, the ghastly _ Barbie _ and the hugely

overrated _ Oppenheimer _ swept all before them at the box office and the awards ceremonies. _ Barbie _  became the highest-grossing domestic release in Warner Bros. history.  _ Barbie _  

and  _ Oppenheimer _  led the July 21–23 weekend to a total revenue of $310.8 million, making it the fourth-largest aggregate domestic weekend in America ever. Christopher Nolan’s _

Oppenheimer _ won seven Academy Awards.  2024-25, by contrast, has not been a year of big blockbusters, but a year of quirky films: about corruption at a papal election, a Jewish-Hungarian

modernist architect who survived the Holocaust, the brutal world of Mexican gangsters with a musical twist, two Jewish cousins going in search of their grandmother’s past in wartime Poland,

and a film about how Bob Dylan found his voice as one of the great singers of the Sixties. The titles reveal the dark feel of the films: _ The Brutalist _ , _ A Real Pain _ , _ A Complete

Unknown… _ It was hard to call, which was presumably why none of them swept the BAFTAs, though _ Conclave _ and _ The Brutalist _ divided up the major awards. The nearest thing to a

blockbuster, _ Dune: Part Two _ , directed by Dennis Villeneuve, which grossed more than $700 million worldwide, barely got a look-in at the BAFTAs.  It has also been a year of astonishing

acting performances: Ralph Fiennes and Stanley Tucci in _ Conclave _ ; Timothée   Chalamet as Dylan and Edward Norton as Pete Seeger in _ A Complete Unknown _ ; Adrien Brody, Guy Pearce and

Felicity Jones in _ The Brutalist _ ; Zoe Saldaña, Karla Sofía Gascón and Selena Gomez as three remarkable women in _ Emilia Perez _ ; and Fernanda Torres in _ I’m Still Here _ , another

dark film, this time a political thriller set in 1970s Brazil. After Barbenheimer it feels as if the movies have grown up and discovered modern history, from the death camps and protest

songs in Sixties America to violence in Mexico and Brazil. In less than a fortnight all eyes will be on the Oscars. It’s hard to believe they will overlook _ A Complete Unknown _ (seven

nominations), _ Wicked _ (ten nominations), or Demi Moore (nominated for Best Actress for _ The Substance _ ). But the BAFTAs just did.  A MESSAGE FROM THEARTICLE _We are the only

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