Australian Cate Blanchett has been nominated for a BAFTA for her leading performance in Tár, fuelling her chances of taking out another Oscar.
Key points:
- Cate Blanchett leads the list of Australians to score BAFTA nominations, getting a nod for her lead performance in Tár
- The best actress list also includes Ana de Armas, Viola Davis, Danielle Deadwyler and Emma Thompson
- Austin Butler, Colin Farrell, Brendan Fraser, Bill Nighy, Daryl McCormack and Paul Mescal are nominated for best lead actor
In the film, Blanchett plays a gay conductor of a Berlin orchestra whose career comes tumbling down due to an abuse scandal.
Tár received five BAFTA nominations, including best film, best director, best original screenplay and best leading actress.
Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis Presley biopic Elvis came in third with nine nominations, including best film and a leading actor recognition for Austin Butler.
Luhrmann’s wife Catherine Martin was also nominated in the production design and costume design segments.
It was the German remake of the anti-war classic All Quiet on the Western Front which led the nominations, overtaking other award-season favourites with 14 nods.
Based on the epic 1928 novel by German author Erich Maria Remarque about the horrors of conflict during World War I, the Netflix movie was recognised in the best film category, as well as for films not in the English language, best director, best supporting actor, best adapted screenplay, best original score and other craft prizes.
It equals the record of 2001’s Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon for the most nominations received by a film not in the English language, organisers said.
“It’s really exciting because it shows that cinema viewers and our voting members are watching a broader range of films,” Anna Higgs, chair of the BAFTA Film Committee, said.
“We’re really getting to a stage where subtitles aren’t considered scary anymore and actually the power of cinema can communicate across borders and cultures.”
Dark comedy The Banshees of Inisherin and the dimension-hopping Everything Everywhere All At Once each secured 10 nominations.
Banshees, a tale of two feuding friends on a remote island off the coast of Ireland, received nominations for leading actor Colin Farrell as well as supporting cast members Brendan Gleeson, Barry Keoghan and Kerry Condon.
That film and Steven Spielberg’s coming-of-age story The Fabelmans were the two big winners at the Golden Globes earlier this month, but the latter received just one BAFTA nod, for original screenplay.
Everything Everywhere All At Once secured nominations for leading actress Michelle Yeoh, supporting actress Jamie Lee Curtis and supporting actor Ke Huy Quan, as well as for best film, best original screenplay and best director for Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert.
The best leading actress category also includes Ana de Armas for Blonde, Viola Davis for The Woman King, Danielle Deadwyler for Till and Emma Thompson for Good Luck to You, Leo Grande.
Alongside Butler and Farrell, competing for the best leading actor award will be Brendan Fraser for The Whale, Daryl McCormack for Good Luck to You, Leo Grande, Paul Mescal for Aftersun and Bill Nighy for Living.
The BAFTAs will be awarded on February 19 in London.
Reuters