Key events
Adrien Brody wins best leading actor!
Gwilym Mumford
We’re into the home straight, and it’s big awards only from here on in. First up best actor, presented by Pamela Anderson and it goes to … Adrien Brody, who overcomes a mild AI controversy to win. We all fancied home town hero Ralph Fiennes to win this one, so this counts as a surprise. Brody bigs up his British bona fides though, shouting out his “wonderful, beautiful, British girlfriend” Georgina Chapman, as well the British public. He has lived in the UK recently while appearing in the West End and says that “this place feels like home”.
Gwilym Mumford
Warwick Davis is the winner of this year’s Bafta fellowship, and there’s a lovely segment introducing him, with tributes from George Lucas, Ron Howard and rather movingly, two of his children. Davis lost his wife last year and tearfully remembers her here, thanking his kids for keeping him “engaging in life”. But there’s humour, too: “To anyone out there dreaming of telling their story or creating something meaningful, go for it, the world needs your vision,” he says. “And if you need someone to bring that vision to life, just remember that little fella with the Bafta.”
Gwilym Mumford
It wasn’t just Audiard’s Karla Sofía Gascón tribute that was cut from the BBC broadcast (see 20.11): Variety reports that there were several Donald Trump jokes made by Tennant that got cut, too.
Brady Corbet wins best director!
Gwilym Mumford
Another win for The Brutalist, which also walked off with best original score and cinematography in that rushed-through segment from earlier. It’s a welcome win for Corbet, who looked to be losing ground to Anora’s Sean Baker in the Oscar best director race. “Best director? There’s no such thing as best” he says, before adding that it’s “a joke” that he’s in a category with the esteemed likes of Denis Villeneuve.
David Jonsson wins rising star
Gwilym Mumford
This one is a welcome surprise! The excellent Alien: Romulus, Rye Lane and Industry actor wins ahead of the likes of Mikey Madison and Marisa Abela. He thanks all the “directors who have taken a chance on me”. “I’m just an east London boy”, he says, who didn’t think there was space for him in the industry. “Star I don’t know, but rising … I guess”.
Gwilym Mumford
Back in the real, non-tape-delayed world, Catherine Shoard has filed her news report of this year’s ceremony. You can read that here if you so wish.
Gwilym Mumford
Now for a rather peculiar in memoriam segment, soundtracked for reasons unknown by Jeff Goldblum playing a jazzy As Time Goes By on piano. It rather takes the emphasis off the figures being remembered, who include Shelley Duvall, James Earl Jones, Maggie Smith, Roger Corman, Teri Garr, Donald Sutherland, Joan Plowright and Kris Kristofferson.
Conclave wins outstanding British film!
Gwilym Mumford
Conclave’s second award of the night and it’s a biggie. Director Edward Berger accepts it remarking that it’s surprising given “I’m not even from here!” Ahead of elections next week in his homeland of Germany, he gives the night’s first truly political speech. “We live in a crisis of democracy,” he says. “Institutions that used to bring us together are bringing us apart.”
Gwilym Mumford
Now we’re rattling through a montage of awards deemed not important enough to be shown properly, including sound, production design, score, casting and – interestingly – film not in the English language. I say interestingly because that award went to Emilia Pérez and, as alluded to earlier, featured a speech by Jacques Audiard that paid fulsome tribute to Karla Sofía Gascón. They seem to skip over that detail on the broadcast, but you can read all about it here:
Gwilym Mumford
Simon Pegg hands out the outstanding contribution to cinema award to the charity MediCinema, which custom-builds cinemas in UK hospitals. You can read all about their excellent work in Libby Brooks’s piece below.
Gwilym Mumford
The actual ceremony has finished now – so anyone who actively wants to be spoiled can find out all the winners here.
Zoe Saldaña wins best supporting actress!
Gwilym Mumford
Saldaña isn’t dragged down by the Emilia Pérez furore, and quite right, too, because she is by far the best thing about that film. She gives a speech that could best be described as “big”, and she probably would have been played off if it wasn’t for Bafta’s deference to Hollywood stars. But she pays tribute to Jacques Audiard, and the film’s cast, including – in passing – Karla Sofía Gascón.
Kieran Culkin wins best supporting actor!
Gwilym Mumford
A victory that was as nailed-on as Martin Luther’s Theses on a church door in Germany. Culkin has won everything going for his energetic, fraught performance in A Real Pain, and will surely do so again at the Oscars next month. He’s not here, due to the illness of a family member, so Eisenberg accepts it in his stead, and reveals that Culkin nearly quit his film two weeks before production started.
Gwilym Mumford
In a sop to livebloggers everywhere, the awards firehose is briefly turned off for a musical interlude. It’s Take That, singing Greatest Day, which – unlikely as it sounds – appears in Anora. Gary Barlow and co start their performance in the audience, briefly lingering around Anora’s star, Mikey Madison, who doesn’t look wildly fussed it must be said. Tennant follows it up with some strained Take That-themed banter with Saoirse Ronan and Jack Lowden.
Wallace & Gromit wins best animated film!
Gwilym Mumford
Eisenberg is back on stage, this time presenting best animated film with his A Real Pain co-star Will Sharpe. Wallace & Gromit wins, as it was always expected to. A chance for Nick Park to give a second, more structured speech? Nope, he didn’t write one so he riffs on the patience of animators and more importantly their loved ones. Very sweet.
Conclave wins best adapted screenplay!
Gwilym Mumford
Stephen Merchant introduces the award with the night’s first genuinely funny moment, an extended riff on brands being adapted into film. He says that he’s optioned Boggle and “Judi Dench has signed up to play the egg-timer”, before handing Conclave its first win of the night.
A Real Pain wins for best original screenplay!
Gwilym Mumford
We’re rattling through these now! Lupita Nyong’o hands the award to Jesse Eisenberg, writer, director and star of the brilliant A Real Pain. He says he hasn’t got a speech prepared, and I believe him, but he pays a lovely impromptu tribute to his wife for helping inspire his work. Though he says she “didn’t come because she didn’t think I’d win”.
Rich Peppiatt wins outstanding debut by a British writer, director or producer for Kneecap!
Gwilym Mumford
Hope for us all as a former journo takes home the award, for the brilliantly inventive and funny Kneecap. He heads up to the stage on his own, so we sadly don’t get a shot of a man in a tricolour ski mask flanking him. Everyone “should have their language respected, their culture respected and their homeland respected” he says.
