LONDON – Nomadland, Chloé Zhao’s drama about a middle-aged woman traveling the US in a van looking for migrant work, garnered the most high-profile nominations for this year’s EE British Academy Film Awards, the UK’s equivalent to the Oscars.
On Tuesday, the film starring Frances McDormand and winning the Golden Globe for Best Drama in February received seven nominations for the awards commonly known as BAFTAs.
It will fight for the best film against “The Trial of the Chicago 7”, “Promising Young Woman”, “The Father” and “The Mauretanian”.
The nominations for best motion picture are almost the same as the titles that competed for best drama at this year’s Golden Globes. (Only “Mank”, David Fincher’s rerun of “Citizen Kane”, is missing, replaced by “The Mauretanian”.) In the talent categories for this year’s BAFTAs, however, the nominees are more diverse than the Golden Globe lists. Many come from independent, low-budget films such as Rocks, a British coming-of-age story about a black teenager in London that also received seven nominations.
This appears to be the result of a recent revision of BAFTA’s voting rules to increase the diversity of nominees following recent criticism. Last year, no black people were nominated in the main BAFTA categories, and no women were nominated for best female director. These omissions caused a sensation and criticism on social media at the awards ceremony on stage. “I think we sent a very clear message to people of color that you are not welcome here,” said Joaquin Phoenix as he accepted the best actor award for his performance on “Joker”.
BAFTA urged all 6,700 voting members to undergo unconscious bias training prior to voting on this year’s nominees. They also had to watch a selection of 15 films to expand the range of titles viewed. Among dozens of other changes to the voting process to increase the diversity of nominees, they were selected for the first time from “longlists” drawn up by BAFTA with the involvement of expert juries.
In contrast to the nomination lists of the past few years, which were distorted by men, four of the nominations for the best director announced on Tuesday are women; Four of the six nominees in both main actor categories are people of color.
For example, in the category of best directors, Chloé Zhao was nominated for “Nomadland” and will compete against Lee Isaac Chung for “Minari”. Sarah Gavron for “Rocks”; Shannon Murphy for “Babyteeth”; Jasmila Zbanic for “Quo Vadis, Aida?” a retelling of a massacre in the Bosnian War of the 1990s; and Thomas Vinterberg for “Another Round”, a dark comedy about the Danish attitude towards alcohol.
In the category of best actresses, Frances McDormand, the star of “Nomadland”, competes against Radha Blank for her role in “The Forty-Year-Old Version”, Wunmi Mosaku for the horror film “His House” and Bukky Bakray, the teenager -Star of “Rocks”. This list contains fewer recognizable stars than in previous years: Rosamund Pike and Andra Day, who won the leading actress awards at this year’s Golden Globes, are missing.
BAFTA vice chair Pippa Harris said in a video interview that the main change that shaped this year’s nominations was the requirement that voters watch more films than usual rather than just letting them see those from other awards or marketing campaigns are the most enthusiastic. “Over and over again, people have emailed, written, and called to say it made a huge difference, and they have seen movies they would normally never have come to and found work that they absolutely loved “, she said.
Film awards are typically dominated by five or six highly acclaimed films, said Marc Samuelson, chairman of the BAFTA film committee, in the same interview. “If we upset that a little, it’s a good thing,” he added.
Around 258 films have been nominated for this year’s awards and viewed over 150,000 times on a television portal specially created for voters, he said.
This year’s winners will be announced on April 11th at a ceremony in London. Samuelson wouldn’t explain how the event will take place, but he said it would comply with UK coronavirus rules. Indoor events are not allowed in England until May 17th at the earliest.
The Academy of Arts and Sciences for Feature Films will announce nominations for this year’s Oscars next Monday.
