With a record-tying 14 nominations, All Quiet on the Western Front is in the lead among the 2023 BAFTA film award candidates.
Netflix’s acclaimed antiwar epic is set to compete for almost every below-the-line award at the ceremony, including best film, director (for Edward Berger), adapted screenplay, and supporting actor (for Albrecht Schuch). It has received the most BAFTA nominations for a movie since 2011 (when The King’s Speech received 14 nods), and it now shares the honour with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
The nominees, who were announced on Thursday from the British Academy’s London headquarters, were in the same order as the BAFTA longlists, which were released earlier this month. Favorites for the awards season The Banshees of Inisherin and Everything Everywhere All at One, who each received 10 nominations, were followed by All Quiet. Both movies dominated the performance categories, with nominations for Kerry Condon, Brendan Gleeson, Barry Keoghan, Michelle Yeoh (whose last BAFTA nomination was for Crouching Tiger), Ke Huy Quan, and Jamie Lee Curtis in Everything Everywhere, and Colin Farrell (perhaps surprisingly, his first BAFTA film nomination) in Banshees (Gleeson and Keoghan filling two of the five supporting actor slots).
Elvis, up for best film, best actor (for Austin Butler), and seven of the craft categories, is close behind with nine nods.
But altogether, the 2023 nominations are a very broad and diversified group, with several BAFTA first-timers, 45 films being nominated in total, as well as many surprises, shocks, and snubs. Aftersun, The Batman, Good Luck to You, Leo Grande, Top Gun: Maverick, and The Whale each received four nominations, while Babylon, Empire of Light, and Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio each received three. Tár received five nominations overall.
The 2023 film awards are the first for BAFTA chief executive Jane Millichip, who remarked, “It’s really the range across all genres, and forms of cinema storytelling, viewpoints, and representation, that’s what struck me more than anything” (she came on in late 2022). In addition, Millichip cited the fact that 40% of the performers nominated for awards were from ethnically diverse backgrounds. This was a problem with which BAFTA was heavily criticised a few years ago, prompting a laborious review process and a significant revision to its voting methods.
The increasing gap between the BAFTA awards and the Academy Awards, so frequently in the past basically mirror copies of each other in terms of nominations and audience support, is among the expected post-announcement talking topics, aside from All Quiet on the Western Front’s record haul.
While Cate Blanchett of Tár (who is already a three-time BAFTA winner), Yeoh, Danielle Deadwyler for Till, previous supporting actress winner Viola Davis for The Woman King, and Ana de Armas for Blonde are included in the leading actress category, double winner Emma Thompson receives her seventh nomination for Good Luck to You, Leo Grande. With nominations for best British picture, outstanding debut, and arguably the biggest surprise of the day, leading actor for Daryl McCormack, who may have out-muscled Tom Cruise to secure one of the six spots, Sophie Hyde’s British drama emerged as one of the standouts (the Oscars only has room for five).
McCormack, who is also a Rising Star nomination, is the face of a group of up-and-coming actors experiencing their first taste of BAFTA film success. Paul Mescal, who has previously won a BAFTA TV award for his performance in Normal People, is also up for a leading actor award for his work in the film Aftersun.
14 out of the 24 nominees in the performance categories are first-timers, according to Emma Baehr, executive director of BAFTA Awards & Content.
