The 77th edition of the BAFTA Awards this Sunday awarded its most relevant awards to two films with an uncomfortable political message, two stories about the darkest side of the 20th century: the nuclear threat and the genocide of the Jewish people.
Oppenheimer
, the story of the scientist whose contribution was essential to the development of the atomic bomb and the hastened end of World War II, J. Robert Oppenheimer, has taken the award for best picture.
The film has been the great winner of the gala and has won three other relevant awards.
Best director, for Christopher Nolan – his first BAFTA – and best lead actor, for Irishman Cillian Murphy, who plays the tormented scientist.
“Thank you for seeing the potential behind such a dark story,” said Nolan, who collected the award for best film accompanied by his wife, the film's producer, Emma Thomas.
And best supporting actor, for Robert Downey Jr. and his masterful interpretation of Oppenheimer's rival, the member of the United States Atomic Energy Commission, Lewis Strauss.
Nolan's film has also won the award for Best Score.
More information
The red carpet of the Bafta 2024 awards, in images
The Zone of Interest
, the overwhelming story of the Nazi commander responsible for the Auschwitz concentration camp, Rudolf Hoss, his family, and the idyllic house they enjoy on the other side of the wall, has won two of the most relevant BAFTAs: best film British film - it is an Anglo-Polish co-production - and best non-English language film.
The few dialogues of a feature film that reflects with subtle intelligence the “banality of evil” with which the political theorist Hanna Arendt described Nazi cruelty are in German.
The Snow Society
, by JA Bayona, also aspired to that award, but has not managed to displace Jonatahn Glazer's film, based on the novel of the same name by the late Martin Amis.
Emma Stone with Idris Elba after receiving the award for best actress at the BAFTA.ANDY RAIN (EFE)
Awards for actresses
The protagonist of
Poor Things
, Emma Stone, has won the BAFTA for best lead actress, with her characterization of Bella Baxter, a fun, iconoclastic recreation with a deeply feminist message of the myth of Frankenstein.
The American Da'Vine Joy Randolph has won the award for best supporting actress for her role in
The Holdovers
.
Anatomy of a Fall,
also one of the favorite films in this edition of the BAFTAs, has won the award for best original screenplay, but its protagonist, Sandra Hüller, also nominated for the role of Hoss's wife in
The Zone of Interest
, did not has achieved none of the coveted masks of the British academy.
The gala, held at London's Royal Festival Hall, on the south bank of the Thames, was attended by stars such as Bradley Cooper, Carey Mulligan;
Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling – no luck for
Barbie
either –;
Cillian Murphy, Robert Downey Jr. or the president of the British Academy of Film and Television, the Prince of Wales, William of England.
His wife, Kate Middleton, is still convalescing after undergoing abdominal surgery in mid-January.
The BAFTA for best documentary went to
20 Days in Mariupol
, directed by Mstislav Chernov, which narrates the siege of this city after Vladimir Putin's Russia launched its conquest of Ukraine.
“It is not a documentary about us [the team that shot it] but about the people of Ukraine.
The history of Mariupol is the symbol of everything that has happened until now, of the struggle and faith [of the Ukrainians],” Chernov said when collecting the award.
The award for best animated film went to
The Boy and the Heron
, by Hayao Miyazaki.
The academy has presented its honorary BAFTA to the British Samantha Morton.