The 2020 BAFTA nominations are in — and pretty damn disappointing. People of color, such as “Hustlers'” Jennifer Lopez and “The Farewell’s” Awkwafina, have been completely shut out of the four major acting categories. This has inspired the hashtag #BAFTAsSoWhite to trend on social media.
Activists and commentators aren’t the only ones who are upset. BAFTA CEO Amanda Berry said she was “very disappointed” by the lack of diversity among the acting nominees, per Screen Daily.
Scarlett Johansson scored two nods: Leading Actress (“Marriage Story”) and Supporting Actress (“Jojo Rabbit”). Margot Robbie will compete against herself in the Supporting Actress race — she’s up for both “Bombshell” and “Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood.” “Little Women’s” Saoirse Ronan and Florence Pugh received nominations for Leading Actress and Supporting Actress, respectively. Oscar frontrunner Renée Zellweger is also up for Leading Actress for her work in “Judy.”
The EE Rising Star Award shortlist is much more racially inclusive. Three of its five nominees — Awkwafina, Micheal Ward (“Blue Story”), and Kelvin Harrison, Jr. (“Waves”) — are people of color.
Meanwhile, zero women-directed titles are up for Best Film. And, for the seventh year in a row, no women are being recognized in the directing category. That’s right: the BAFTAs aren’t giving any love to Greta Gerwig (“Little Women”), Lulu Wang (“The Farewell”), Céline Sciamma (“Portrait of a Lady on Fire”), Joanna Hogg (“The Souvenir”), or the many other women who helmed incredible films in the past year.
Women-directed films weren’t completely ignored. “The Farewell,” the story of a family that lies to their grandmother about her terminal diagnosis, is nominated in the Film Not in the English Language category, as is “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” and Waad al-Kateab and Edward Watts’ “For Sama.” The former traces the romance between an artist and her subject, a reluctant bride-to-be, and the latter documents five years of conflict in Aleppo. “For Sama” is the sole women-directed film nominated for Outstanding British Film.
“For Sama” is also nominated in the Documentary and Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director or Producer sections. The Documentary race is also recognizing “American Factory,” Julia Reichert and Steven Bognar’s look at what happened when a Chinese billionaire opened a factory in Ohio, and “The Great Hack,” Jehane Noujaime and Karim Amer’s examination of the Cambridge Analytica-Facebook scandal. Harry Wootliff’s romantic drama “Only You” is up for Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director or Producer as well.
The BAFTAs will be held February 2 in London. Check out the full list of nominations at Screen Daily.
We’ll have to wait to see how “American Factory” fares at the BAFTAs, but it already took home Outstanding Achievement in Nonfiction Feature Filmmaking and Outstanding Achievement in Direction (Reichert and Bognar) at Cinema Eye Honors on Monday.
Other notable wins include Outstanding Achievement in Production, which saw “For Sama’s” al-Kateab tie with “The Cave’s” Kirstine Barfod and Sigrid Dyekjær. “The Cave” follows a female doctor working through air strikes and bombings in Ghouta, Syria. Mary Robertson’s Richard Nixon docuseries “Tricky Dick” took home the Outstanding Achievement in Nonfiction Film for Broadcast.
Cinema Eye’s Heterodox Award, which honors a fiction film that uses documentary filmmaking techniques, went to “The Souvenir,” Joanna Hogg’s semi-autobiographical account of a film student’s toxic romance.
See all the Cinema Eye Honors winners over at Deadline.
