BAFTA Preview: When Voting Members Can’t Be Trusted to Pick the Right Nominees

We were reminded today by Next Best Picture’s Will Mavity on Twitter about the strange new rules put in place by the BAFTA to ensure there is equity in the nominations. Equity is not equality – it means equality of outcomes so that representation is guaranteed. This will impact the Best Director and acting categories where the nominees are not chosen by the voting body at large. They all vote on the long list as per usual. But the nominees in these crucial categories are going to be done by juries.

So no one’s really discussed the new BAFTA voting process:

Everyone voted on the longlists. Next each category (except Picture & BTLs) has a jury assigned to it consisting of 7 to 12 voters (only 50% need to be BAFTA members) They meet & discuss before choosing final 6 nominees

— Will Mavity (@mavericksmovies) March 4, 2021

But here’s the weird part. They can’t guarantee that all of the jury members are even BAFTA members:

This isn’t new news. We’ve known about it for a year but considering the BAFTA nominations are dropping on the 9th it’s probably a good time to revisit this process. The aim is clearly to guarantee equality of outcomes, but it means that the nominees for these categories will not have been voted on BAFTA necessarily. BAFTA has some input but they are not to be trusted in the delicate area of inclusion and diversity. This puts, I think, undo pressure on anyone who isn’t white or male to “carry water” for an institution that desperately needs to change its diversity numbers. That pressure being – wondering why they earned the nomination in the first place.

BAFTA is in a bind, of course, because the rules put in place might not have guaranteed an equality of outcome if the voting members simply picked what they liked best rather than making sure enough women and people of color are represented – and if they came up with all white nominees and no female directing nominees they would be greeted with an onslaught of angry headlines and face boycotts.

But going this route in effect cancels out the whole point of having awards and calling them BAFTA awards. In fact, they’re really just doing what the Gothams do, or the AFI does or the LA and New York film critics do. They aren’t voting so much as negotiating, hand-picking and — let’s be very clear about this — covering their ass. That’s fine, of course. Who doesn’t want to cover their ass, knowing how badly they’d be scolded otherwise, but it does make predicting a little bit harder. Or does it?

Here is the long list for Best Director – now imagining a jury of only maybe 50% BAFTA members looking at it, alongside — carefully selected people who might counsel them on what they might pick to avoid a shitstorm? They are not required to meet any type of quota. They could theoretically pick five white males all on merit – but come on, who are we kidding? Maybe voters would. Zero chance a hand-picked jury will.

Titles/Long list mentions

Women:
Promising Young Woman — Emerald Fennell/13
Nomadland – Chloe Zhao/11
Saint Maud – Rose Glass/11
Rocks – Sarah Gavron/8
One Night In Miami…–Regina King/6
The Assistant  – Kitty Green/3
Babyteeth – Shannon Murphy/3
The Forty-Year-Old Version – Radha Blank/3
Quo Vadis, Aida? — Jasmila Zbanic/2

Men:
Aaron Sorkin/The Trial of the Chicago 7/15
Mank – David Fincher/14
News of the World – Paul Greengrass/12
The Mauritanian – Kevin Macdonald/11
The Father – Florian Zeller/9
The Dig  – Simon Stone/9
Minari – Lee Isaac Chung/8
Tenet – Christopher Nolan/7
The White Tiger – Ramin Bahrani/7
Another Round – Thomas Vinterberg/6

Co-directed:
My Octopus Teacher – Pippa Ehrlich, James Reed (Documentary)/2

Knowing that they are going to pick from each column, and will probably pick the best films – or at east the most awarded, that likely means — I would guess – two men and three women. And probably not two white men, I would imagine. They are choosing six nominees in the category. So maybe something like:

Chloe Zhao
Regina King
Emerald Fennell
David Fincher
Aaron Sorkin
Lee Isaac Chung

I imagine that would be a Best Director lineup that would satisfy those pushing for change. They do have a long history of ignoring the films made by black directors, but especially those that dealt with slavery or race issues. They faced headlines for weeks about how racist they were. Thus, I imagine they knew this year they would have to cover their ass. And it appears to be foolproof.

Despite that, this list doesn’t look all that different from what we’ve been seeing before because voters have been kind of voting this way anyway all year. Look at the Gotham nominees for Best Picture:

Nomadland
The Assistant
First Cow
Never, Rarely, Sometimes, Always
Relic

All five are films by women. The Golden Globes – three director nominees are women and two are women of color. This has been consistent mostly through awards season, though we’ll have to wait and see what the DGA does.

In general, the way we pundits gauge popularity of a specific film is whether it gets a Best Picture AND a Best Director nomination. But Best Director can’t be taken into consideration so only Best Picture will give us an idea of just how popular each film is and it may or may not correspond with Best Director.

Here is Best Picture, in terms of long list mentions:
*No Best Director nomination

The Trial of the Chicago 7/15
Mank/14
Promising Young Woman/13
News of the World/12
*Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom/12
Nomadland/11
The Mauritanian/11
The Dig/9
The Father/9
*Da 5 Bloods/9
The White Tiger/7
*Sound of Metal/7
One Night in Miami …/6
Another Round/6
*Soul/6

Best Picture will be five of these. I think Ma Rainey, given its popularity with nominations, has a shot.

The acting nominees are also led by a jury, from Deadline:

In the acting categories, in order to align them to all other craft categories, voting in Lead and Supporting will move to Chapter voting. In the new Round One voting (see more on this below), the acting chapter will rank its top 15, with the top 12 longlisted. As with Directing, a specially convened longlisting jury will select the final three based on the performances placed 13-22 of the chapter vote to ensure intersectional diversity. In Round Two, a nominating jury for each acting category will consider the 15 longlisted and vote for six performances to be nominated (also an increase from five in previous years). Again, all members vote for the winners.

All acting entrants must now decide whether to submit for lead or supporting to allow for a broader range of performances to be considered and to provide greater clarity for voting members so they can focus solely on the caliber of the performance, BAFTA said. In Round One, actors cannot be longlisted more than once in one acting category, but can appear in separate categories for separate performances. Majumdar says the org will be looking to extend changes to the craft categories in order to “shine a spotlight on diverse voices and encourage that.” Adds Samuelson, “We are at pains to say the steering groups are going to remain indefinitely. We’re going to review progress all the time and see what we need to do — this is just the first phase of change.”

Here are the long lists for acting categories:

LEADING ACTRESS

15 performances will progress to Round Two of voting, and six will be nominated.

• Amy Adams Hillbilly Elegy
• Bukky Bakray Rocks
• Radha Blank The Forty-Year-Old Version
• Jessie Buckley I’m Thinking of Ending Things
• Morfydd Clark Saint Maud
• Viola Davis Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
• Julia Garner The Assistant
• Vanessa Kirby Pieces of a Woman
• Sophia Loren The Life Ahead
• Frances McDormand Nomadland
• Carey Mulligan Promising Young Woman
• Wunmi Mosaku His House
• Kate Winslet Ammonite
• Alfre Woodard Clemency
• Zendaya Malcolm & Marie

LEADING ACTOR

15 performances will progress to Round Two of voting, and six will be nominated.

• Riz Ahmed Sound of Metal
• Kingsley Ben-Adir One Night In Miami…
• Chadwick Boseman Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
• Ralph Fiennes The Dig
• Adarsh Gourav The White Tiger
• Tom Hanks News of the World
• Anthony Hopkins The Father
• Cosmo Jarvis Calm With Horses
• Delroy Lindo Da 5 Bloods
• Mads Mikkelsen Another Round
• Gary Oldman Mank
• Tahar Rahim The Mauritanian
• LaKeith Stanfield Judas and the Black Messiah
• John David Washington Malcolm & Marie
• Steven Yeun Minari

SUPPORTING ACTRESS

15 performances will progress to Round Two of voting, and six will be nominated.

• Niamh Algar Calm With Horses
• Kosar Ali Rocks
• Maria Bakalova Borat Subsequent Moviefilm
• Ellen Burstyn Pieces of a Woman
• Priyanka Chopra Jonas The White Tiger
• Glenn Close Hillbilly Elegy
• Olivia Colman The Father
• Jennifer Ehle Saint Maud
• Dominique Fishback Judas and the Black Messiah
• Jodie Foster The Mauritanian
• Ashley Madekwe County Lines
• Amanda Seyfried Mank
• Saoirse Ronan Ammonite
• Yuh-Jung Youn Minari
• Helena Zengel News of the World

SUPPORTING ACTOR

15 performances will progress to Round Two of voting, and six will be nominated.

• Chadwick Boseman Da 5 Bloods
• Bo Burnham Promising Young Woman
• Sacha Baron Cohen The Trial of the Chicago 7
• Benedict Cumberbatch The Mauritanian
• Daniel Kaluuya Judas and the Black Messiah
• Barry Keoghan Calm With Horses
• Alan Kim Minari
• Frank Langella The Trial of the Chicago 7
• Leslie Odom Jr. One Night In Miami…
• Clarke Peters Da 5 Bloods
• Eddie Redmayne The Trial of the Chicago 7
• Mark Rylance The Trial of the Chicago 7
• Paul Raci Sound of Metal
• David Strathairn Nomadland
• Stanley Tucci Supernova

They have plenty of options here to populate their nominations with the most diverse lineup they’ve ever had. After the Globes chose a woman of color’s film for Best Picture and Best Director, three black acting winners — the BAFTA is like, “hold my beer.”

We’ll be putting up a contest in a day or so and you can try your hand at figuring out how it might go.