The British Are Coming! BAFTA Preview and Predictions

The BAFTA Awards will be handed out this Sunday, March 13th. You can visit their site to find out how best to watch. We will, of course, be around to report on the winners with live updates.

As far as whether or not this will make a difference in the Oscar race, like the Critics Choice and the DGA, the BAFTAs are hitting just before Academy voters get their ballots in hand. So perhaps the Brit contingent will be more influential than they have been in the past. However, that can only take us so far. This is the second year when the BAFTA has used a committee to “help select” their Best Director and acting nominees.

In the current system, the voters still pick the winners. If they didn’t necessarily vote for all the nominees, they’re going to vote for the nominees that best reflect what they would have chosen. This is why they chose Frances McDormand in Nomadland last year. It was as though the other four nominees in the category didn’t fully register — and a few were conspicuous in their absence. Viola Davis wasn’t there. Andra Day wasn’t there. Carey Mulligan wasn’t there.

So is it a fair contest? No. Is it a contest at all? Not really. Does it help the nominees? Maybe? They have a credit on their resume that they were nominated for a BAFTA, but without the groundswell of support from an entire industry, does it make them better known or help them get better jobs in the future? Maybe. Maybe not.

However good their intentions (and they are good), as with the good intentions of every other group trying to make things better for marginalized or sidelined communities, I personally think it begins to look like the BAFTA committees are partly using people as shields to protect the overall membership from criticism. Whether it’s the Academy doing it, extremely powerful corporations doing it, websites doing it, or the BAFTA doing it — at the end of the day if it doesn’t reflect who they actually are, then it is a lie. A pretty lie, perhaps, but a lie all the same. If you’re going to be in the business of handing out awards, then they have to be based on merit — or at least pretend to be. The BAFTA isn’t pretending. And that, I think, might be counterproductive to their end goal.

In terms of Best Director, the end result will be the same as it would have been, most likely: Jane Campion has this wrapped up. It will be shocking if anyone else wins there.

In Best Actress, there are no nominees that correspond with the Oscars, so that will be an interesting category to watch in terms of winners. Interesting, but unhelpful for our purposes.

But there are categories that were open to the voters at large, like Best Picture, the screenplay and the crafts categories. Here, we will get a decent idea of which films and filmmakers they truly liked best. As we know, they are very influential and ubiquitous at the Academy, especially in the acting branch — lots of Brits. What I will be watching for is whether Belfast can be revived there before heading into the Producers Guild.

For Best Picture, there are five contenders:

Belfast
Don’t Look Up
Dune
Licorice Pizza
The Power of the Dog

You have to kick it all the way back to 2004 to find a year when the Best Picture winner at the Oscars was not a BAFTA nominee for Best Picture. And that’s because back then the Academy had just changed its date from being held later in March. Due to a screener glitch, the film (Million Dollar Baby) wasn’t seen by BAFTA members, so it could not be factored in. (It was eligible the following year and got nada.) But since then, all of the Best Picture winners had a corresponding BAFTA nom. CODA does have screenplay and Supporting Actor at BAFTA and did make the long list, but the voters did not choose it as one of their favorite five.

So this is likely down to yet again Belfast vs. The Power of the Dog. The key thing to remember about the BAFTA vote is that it will not be preferential, but will be a simple plurality of all of their members. In recent years, the BAFTA Best Pic hasn’t lined up with the Oscars, nor do the screenplay wins match very often. At the Oscars, screenplay almost always goes with Best Picture. At the BAFTAs, it doesn’t necessarily.

2020
Best Picture: Nomadland
Screenplay: The Father / Promising Young Woman

2019
Best Picture: 1917 (Parasite)
Screenplay: Jojo Rabbit / Parasite

2018
Best Picture: Roma (Green Book)
Screenplay: BlackKklansman / The Favourite (Green Book)

2017
Best Picture: Three Billboards
Screenplay: Call Me By Your Name / Three Billboards (Get Out)

2016
Best Picture: La La Land (Moonlight)
Screenplay: Lion (Moonlight) / Manchester by the Sea

2015
Best Picture: The Revenant (Spotlight)
Screenplay: The Big Short / Spotlight

2014
Best Picture: Boyhood (Birdman)
Screenplay: The Theory of Everything (Imitation Game) / Grand Budapest Hotel (Birdman)

2013
Best Picture: 12 Years a Slave
Screenplay: Philomena (12 Years a Slave) / American Hustle (Her)

2012
Best Picture: Argo
Screenplay: Silver Linings Playbook (Argo) / Django Unchained

2011
Best Picture: The Artist
Screenplay: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (The Descendants) / The Artist (Midnight in Paris)

2010
Best Picture: The King’s Speech
Screenplay: The King’s Speech / The Social Network

2009
Best Picture: The Hurt Locker
Screenplay: Up in the Air (Precious) / The Hurt Locker

As you can see, only once in the era of the preferential ballot (last year) did both Best Picture and Screenplay line up between the BAFTAs and the Oscars.

Also, worth noting there is about a 50/50 record of matching with Best Picture. So that is something to bear in mind.

Either which way, here are our predictions, such as they are:

Best Film
Belfast — Mark Johnson, Sasha Stone
Don’t Look Up
Dune
Licorice Pizza
The Power of the Dog — Marshall Flores, Clarence Moye, Ryan Adams

Outstanding British Film
After Love
Ali & Ava
Belfast — Marshall, Clarence, Mark, Sasha, Ryan
Boiling Point
Cyrano
Everybody’s Talking About Jamie
House of Gucci
Last Night in Soho
No Time to Die
Passing

Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director or Producer
After Love — Marshall, Clarence, Sasha
Boiling Point
The Harder They Fall
Keyboard Fantasies
Passing — Mark, Ryan

Best Film Not in the English Language
Drive My Car — Marshall, Clarence, Mark, Sasha, Ryan
The Hand of God
Parallel Mothers
Petite Maman
The Worst Person in the World

Best Documentary
Becoming Cousteau
Cow
Flee — Marshall, Clarence, Mark, Ryan
The Rescue
Summer of Soul — Sasha

Best Animated Film
Encanto — Marshall, Clarence, Mark, Sasha, Ryan
Flee
Luca
The Mitchells vs the Machines

Best Director
Aleem Khan (After Love)
Ryûsuke Hamaguchi (Drive My Car)
Audrey Diwan (Happening)
Paul Thomas Anderson (Licorice Pizza)
Jane Campion (The Power of the Dog) — Marshall, Clarence, Mark, Sasha, Ryan
Julia Ducournau (Titane)

Best Original Screenplay
Aaron Sorkin (Being the Ricardos)
Kenneth Branagh (Belfast) — Marshall, Clarence, Mark, Sasha, Ryan
Adam McKay (Don’t Look Up)
Zach Baylin (King Richard)
Paul Thomas Anderson (Licorice Pizza)

Best Adapted Screenplay
Sian Heder (Coda)
Ryûsuke Hamaguchi (Drive My Car) —Ryan
Eric Roth, Jon Spaihts, Denis Villeneuve (Dune)
Maggie Gyllenhaal (The Lost Daughter) — Sasha
Jane Campion (The Power of the Dog) — Marshall, Clarence, Mark

Best Actress
Lady Gaga (House of Gucci) — Mark
Alana Haim (Licorice Pizza)
Emilia Jones (CODA) — Sasha
Renate Reinsve (The Worst Person in the World) — Marshall
Joanna Scanlan (After Love) — Clarence
Tessa Thompson (Passing)

Best Actor
Adeel Akhtar (Ali & Ava)
Mahershala Ali (Swan Song)
Benedict Cumberbatch (The Power of the Dog) — Marshall, Clarence, Mark
Leonardo DiCaprio (Don’t Look Up)
Stephen Graham (Boiling Point) — Ryan
Will Smith (King Richard) — Sasha

Best Supporting Actress
Caitríona Balfe (Belfast)
Jessie Buckley (The Lost Daughter)
Ariana DeBose (West Side Story) — Marshall, Clarence, Mark, Sasha, Ryan
Ann Dowd (Mass)
Aunjanue Ellis (King Richard)
Ruth Negga (Passing)

Best Supporting Actor
Mike Faist (West Side Story) — Ryan
Ciarán Hinds (Belfast) — Clarence, Mark
Troy Kotsur (Coda) — Sasha
Woody Norman (C’mon C’mon)
Jesse Plemons (The Power of the Dog)
Kodi Smit-McPhee (The Power of the Dog) — Marshall

Best Original Score
Being the Ricardos
Don’t Look Up
Dune — Marshall, Mark, Sasha, Ryan
The French Dispatch
The Power of the Dog — Clarence

Best Casting
Boiling Point — Clarence
Dune — Sasha
The Hand of God
King Richard
West Side Story — Marshall, Mark, Ryan

Best Cinematography
Dune — Mark, Sasha
Nightmare Alley
No Time to Die
The Power of the Dog — Marshall, Clarence, Ryan
The Tragedy of Macbeth

Best Editing
Belfast — Sasha
Dune — Marshall, Mark
Licorice Pizza
No Time to Die — Clarence, Ryan
Summer of Soul

Best Production Design
Cyrano
Dune — Marshall, Mark, Sasha
The French Dispatch
Nightmare Alley — Clarence, Ryan
West Side Story

Best Costume Design
Cruella — Marshall, Clarence, Mark, Sasha, Ryan
Cyrano
Dune
The French Dispatch
Nightmare Alley

Best Makeup and Hair
Cruella — Clarence, Ryan
Cyrano
Dune — Marshall, Mark
The Eyes of Tammy Faye — Sasha
House of Gucci

Best Sound
Dune — Marshall, Mark 
Last Night in Soho
No Time to Die — Clarence
A Quiet Place Part II
West Side Story — Sasha, Ryan

Best Special Visual Effects
Dune — Marshall, Clarence, Mark, Sasha, Ryan
Free Guy
Ghostbusters: Afterlife
The Matrix Resurrections
No Time to Die