“Conclave” Ascends to BAFTA’s Peak With 12 Nominations, “Emilia Perez” Right Behind With 11
The British Academy has officially blessed Edward Berger‘s delightfully claustrophobic Vatican thriller Conclave with 12 BAFTA film nominations, which leads all other films.
We had a chance to chat with Berger and one of the film’s stars, Isabella Rossellini, who plays Sister Agnes in the adaptation of Robert Harris’s novel. Drawing on her own experience of going to a school run by nuns, Rossellini told us, “I remember they were very direct but also very respectful, and so when I played Sister Agnes, I thought of them and was very glad to have had that experience, so I didn’t hesitate. I knew them well.” Rossellini is nominated for Best Supporting Actress.
Berger, meanwhile, revealed to us the key to Ralph Fiennes Cardinal Lawrence, who is tasked with running the conclave that will select the new pope. “Ralph’s character is basically based in doubt. He says at some point, “I have difficulty with prayer.” Just imagine. That’s like me saying I have difficulty believing in the power of the camera I’m using, or a writer saying, “I don’t believe my words anymore.”
Conclave’s 12 nominations include Best Film, Best Director for Berger, outstanding British Film, Best Leading Actor for Ralph Fiennes, and Best Adapted Screenplay for Peter Straughan. In 2023, Berger’s World War I drama All Quiet on the Western Front landed a record-tying 14 BAFTA nominations for a non-English language film, which he shares with Ang Lee’s masterpiece Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
Writer/director Jacques Audiard’s Emilia Perez was close behind with 11 nominations with his tale about four remarkable women in Mexico pursuing their own dreams no matter the costs. Meanwhile, writer/director Brady Corbet’s American epic The Brutalist, which tracks visionary architect László Tóth (Adrien Brody) fleeing post-war Europe in 1947 to rebuild his legacy in the U.S., carved out 9 nominations.
Sean Baker’s cracked, courageous take on Cinderella, Anora, received seven BAFTA nominations, which included Mikey Madison landing one for leading actress, playing Anora, a sex worker who elopes with a billionaire Russian whose family is very unmoved by the seriousness of their union or Anora belonging in the family.
This year’s BAFTA Film Awards are blessed with a wider variety of genres than ever before, including horror (The Substance, Heretic), historical epics (Corbet’s The Brutalist and Steve McQueen’s Blitz), musicals or music-centric (Wicked, A Complete Unknown), and big-budget spectacles, be they sci-fi (Dune: Part Two) or sand-and-sword epics (Gladiator II).
Fiennes is joined in the hunt for the leading actor category with Hugh Grant (Heretic), Adrien Brody (The Brutalist), Colman Domingo (Sing Sing), Timothée Chalamet (A Complete Unknown), and Sebastian Stan (The Apprentice).
Emilia Pérez‘s three main actresses, Karla Sofía Gascón, Selena Gomez, and Zoe Saldaña, are all nominees for their performance. In the best leading actress BAFTA race, Gascon is joined by Cynthia Erivo (Wicked) — her first-ever main BAFTA award nomination, Marianne Jean-Baptiste (Hard Truths), Mikey Madison (Anora), Demi Moore (The Substance), and Saoirse Ronan (The Outrun).
For the full list of the nominations, check out BAFTA’s site.
Featured image: (L to R) Brían F. O’Byrne as Cardinal O’Malley and Ralph Fiennes as Cardinal Lawrence in director Edward Berger’s CONCLAVE, a Focus Features release. Credit: Courtesy of Focus Features. © 2024 All Rights Reserved.
