Cillian Murphy, winner of the main actor award for Oppenheimer, poses for photographers on the 77th British Academy Film Awards, BAFTA’s, in London, Sunday, Feb. 18, 2024.

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Cillian Murphy, winner of the main actor award for Oppenheimer, poses for photographers on the 77th British Academy Film Awards, BAFTA’s, in London, Sunday, Feb. 18, 2024.

Vianney Le Caer/Vianney Le Caer/Invision/AP

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

Gothic fantasia Poor Things took 5 prizes and Holocaust drama The Zone of Interest 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 taking part in physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, the daddy of the atomic bomb.

Murphy stated he was grateful to play such a “colossally knotty, complex character.”

Nolan famous that nuclear weapons are “a nihilistic subject and the film inevitably reflects that,” telling the film’s backers: “Thank you for taking on something dark.”

Emma Stone was named greatest actress for taking part in the wild and spirited Bella Baxter in “Poor Things,” 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 Kid.

It received the most effective movie race in opposition to Poor Things, 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 Energy Commission head Lewis Strauss.

Da’Vine Joy Randolph was named greatest supporting actress for taking part in a boarding faculty prepare dinner in The Holdovers and stated she felt a “responsibility I don’t take lightly” to inform the tales of underrepresented individuals like her character Mary.

Da’Vine Joy Randolph, winner of greatest supporting actress for ‘The Holdovers’, poses on the 77th British Academy Film Awards (BAFTA) in London on Sunday, Feb. 18, 2024.

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Da’Vine Joy Randolph, winner of greatest supporting actress for ‘The Holdovers’, poses on the 77th British Academy Film Awards (BAFTA) in London on Sunday, Feb. 18, 2024.

Vianney Le Caer/Vianney Le Caer/Invision/AP

Oppenheimer confronted stiff competitors in what’s extensively thought-about a classic yr for cinema and an awards season energized by the tip of actors’ and writers’ strikes that shut down Hollywood for months.

The Zone of Interest, a British-produced movie shot in Poland with a largely German forged, was named each greatest British movie and greatest movie not in English — a primary — and likewise took the prize for its sound, which has been described as the true star of the movie.

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

“Walls aren’t new from before or since the Holocaust, and it seems stark right now that we should care about innocent people being killed in Gaza or Yemen or Mariupol or Israel,” producer James Wilson stated. “Thank you for recognizing a film that asks us to think in those spaces.”

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

“This is not about us,” stated filmmaker Mstyslav Chernov, who captured the harrowing actuality of life within the besieged metropolis with an AP crew. “This is about Ukraine, about the people of Mariupol.”

Chernov stated the story of the town and its fall into Russian occupation “is a symbol of struggle and a symbol of faith. Thank you for empowering our voice and let’s just keep fighting.”

The awards ceremony, hosted by “Doctor 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, intently watched for hints about who may win on the Oscars on March 10.

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

“It’s a fiction, and we are reasonably fine,” Triet joked.

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

Jefferson stated he hoped the success of the film “maybe changes the minds of the people who are in charge of greenlighting films and TV shows, allows them to be less risk-averse.”

Historical 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 yr’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 significant snub.

Britain’s movie academy launched modifications to extend the awards’ variety in 2020, when no ladies had been nominated as greatest director for the seventh yr operating and all 20 nominees within the lead and supporting performer classes had been white. However, 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 How to Have Sex.

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

Guest of honor was Prince William, in his function as president of the British Academy of Film and Television 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 Murder on the Dancefloor, which shot again up the charts after that includes in Saltburn.

Film 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 youngsters’s houses, stated that “representation matters.”

“The stories we tell, they have the power to change people’s lives,” she stated. “Film changed my life, it transformed me, and it led me here today.”