Highly anticipated Bafta Film Awards has revealed a highly diverse nomination list for this year.
16 out of 24 acting nominees this year are belonging to ethnic minority groups.
The lead position is occupied by Nomadland and Rocks with a total of seven nominations. Mank, Minari, The Father, and Promising Young Woman have garnered six nominations each.
Surprisingly, this year’s nominations for the best director category include four women directors.
Chloe Zhao of Nomadland is one of them. Last week she won the Golden Globes for the same award and category.
However, the biggest surprise is this year’s acting categories and nominations. Last year, the British Academy has faced pressure due to a lack of diversity in their nominations single not a single actor of color was chosen.
A significant change in the nominations can be noticed as this year Daniel Kaluuya, Riz Ahmed, Dominique Fishback, Tahar Rahim, BukkyBakray, and many others have taken place in the acting categories, belonging from an ethnic minority background.
However, many of the well renowned predicted nominees have been missed out, like, Carey Mulligan, Amanda Seyfried, Sacha Baron Cohen, including Viola Davis, Glenn Close, and Gary Oldman.
The winners of each category will be announced on 11th April without any live audience.
Let’s have a look, who scored how many nods –
7 Nominations – Nomadland, Rocks
6 Nominations – The Father, Mank, Minari, Promising Young Woman
5 Nominations – The Dig, The Mauritanian
4 Nominations – Another Round, Calm With Horses, Judas and the Black Messiah, News of the World, Sound of Metal
3 Nominations – The Trial of the Chicago 7, His House, Soul, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
Last year’s nomination sparked the amber of criticism as all the nominations were white people and there was a lack of female directors every year.
Robbie Collin, film critic of The Telegraph said, “Umm, wow – this is the wildest slate of Bafta directing nominees I think I’ve ever seen. When I and others were moaning last year about voters unthinkingly defaulting to the obvious choices, this was basically the dream alternative scenario.”
Famous critic Rhianna Dhillon tweeted over social media, “I am so pumped to go on the news tonight and NOT have the same old chat about diversity! Look at that director shortlist! Look at those acting categories!”
Film critic Doug Jamieson also tweeted, “They clearly couldn’t care less about the Oscar race. That’s fabulous. Every awards show should have this mentality. You do you, Bafta.”
Baz Bamigboye from The Daily Mail said, “About time – Talk about diversity!”
Bafta has made over 120 changes to its voting, membership, and campaigning processes to keep everything diversely enrich with initiating any criticism.
A big change has been made to this year’s introduction of the longlist system to increase the viewership of all the films that are submitted.
The Bafta Awards 2021 is ensuring greater diversity and films.
