With a dozen nominations from this year’s EE British Academy Film Awards, Fox Searchlight Pictures’ The Favourite finds itself a bona fide awards season frontrunner. Fresh off a Golden Globe win for leading actress Olivia Colman, as well as a record-breaking sweep of the British Independent Film Awards last month, the Yorgos Lanthimos–directed dark comedy about Queen Anne will now compete for BAFTA’s best film honour against Focus Features’ BlacKkKlansman, Universal Pictures’ Green Book, Netflix’s Roma, and Warner Brothers’ A Star Is Born. Among The Favourite’s 12 categories are outstanding British film and supporting actress for both Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz.
Roma, Alfonso Cuarón’s Mexican period piece about a domestic worker, earned seven BAFTA nods, out of which the writer-director-editor-cinematographer is nominated for six (the film was also recognized for Eugenio Caballero and Bárbara Enríquez’s production design). A Star Is Born, the Bradley Cooper–led musical romance, also scored seven nods with Cooper’s name on five of those. Leading actress Lady Gaga will face Globe winners Colman and Glenn Close of Sony Pictures Classics’ The Wife, plus Viola Davis of 20th Century Fox’s Widows and Melissa McCarthy of Fox Searchlight’s Can You Ever Forgive Me?
First Man, Universal Pictures’ Neil Armstrong biopic, and Bohemian Rhapsody, 20th Century Fox’s Queen biopic, also nabbed seven nominations, including supporting actress Claire Foy of the former and leading actor Rami Malek of the latter. Malek will compete against Cooper, Christian Bale of Annapurna Pictures’ Vice, Steve Coogan of Sony Pictures’ Classics Stan & Ollie, and Viggo Mortensen of Green Book.
Up for BAFTA’s directing award are Spike Lee for BlacKkKlansman (also nominated for adapted screenplay), Paweł Pawlikowski for Amazon Studios’ Cold War (also in the original screenplay category), Lanthimos, Cuarón, and Cooper.
Come 22 January, we’ll see how similar the results of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences prove; the American equivalent of the British Academy Film Awards share around the same amount of members, with a portion of those overlapping. For a full list of 2019 BAFTA film nominees, click here.
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