{"id":394527,"date":"2026-01-28T06:37:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-28T06:37:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/394527\/"},"modified":"2026-01-28T06:37:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-28T06:37:07","slug":"bafta-has-caught-the-zeitgeist-with-one-battle-after-another-but-lets-hear-it-for-the-ballad-of-wallis-island-baftas-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/394527\/","title":{"rendered":"Bafta has caught the zeitgeist with One Battle After Another, but let\u2019s hear it for The Ballad of Wallis Island | Baftas 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Bafta nominations list underscores the enormous award-season love being felt for Ryan Coogler\u2019s Sinners, his subversive vampire riff on America\u2019s black experience \u2013 though it isn\u2019t making history in quite the same way as it is at the Oscars<\/a>, having 13 Bafta nominations, one behind Paul Thomas Anderson\u2019s league-leader One Battle After Another with 14.<\/p>\n

The awards-season prominence of Anderson\u2019s epic antifa<\/a> parable, inspired by the Thomas Pynchon novel Vineland, with Leonardo DiCaprio as a dishevelled, clueless ex-revolutionary facing off against Sean Penn\u2019s brutal honcho Colonel Lockjaw, is happening at a queasily appropriate zeitgeist moment. The grotesquely trigger-happy immigration officers of ICE are shooting people dead on US streets and this ugly fiasco is giving us a horribly familiar-looking new figure.<\/p>\n

ICE\u2019s Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino<\/a>, achieving mayfly media stardom at the very moment that he is effectively relieved of his command in Minnesota, has a worryingly familiar buzzcut, sneer and swagger, and of course, like all Maga placemen and apparatchiks, he is submissive to the leader. He has a distinct echo of Sean Penn\u2019s jarhead military tough-guy in One Battle After Another, who is tragicomically flattered when a masonic cabal of Wasp leaders invite him to join their club.<\/p>\n

As for cinema\u2019s other intersections with the headlines, there are Bafta nominations in the non-English anguage section for Jafar Panahi\u2019s It Was Just an Accident, about Iranian theocratic tyranny, and Kaouther Ben Hania\u2019s The Voice of Hind Rajab<\/a>, about the little girl in Gaza killed by the IDF. This category also contains Brazilian film-maker Kleber Mendon\u00e7a Filho\u2019s magnificent The Secret Agent, about a dissident scientist pursued by the authorities in 70s Brazil. I can\u2019t however agree with the saucer-eyed critical love for that other nominee in his category: \u00d3liver Laxe\u2019s preposterous Sir\u0101t<\/a>, with its Pythonesque explosions.<\/p>\n

Extravagant romantic fantasy \u2026 Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal in Hamnet, which has 11 Bafta nominations. Photograph: Landmark Media\/Alamy<\/p>\n

Josh Safdie\u2019s aspartame-rush ping-pong comedy Marty Supreme, featuring Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet, reaffirms its awards-season prominence with 11 nominations, alongside Hamnet, Chlo\u00e9 Zhao\u2019s extravagant romantic fantasy about the origins of Shakespeare\u2019s great tragedy of the Dane. This excellent film has been the subject of backlash, an annual awards-season tradition as unvarying as the state opening of parliament \u2013 this year from commentators who have declared that they do not believe Shakespeare\u2019s Hamlet was inspired by the death of his son Hamnet. I don\u2019t believe it either, but that isn\u2019t the point of this speculative rhapsody of grief.<\/p>\n

Guillermo del Toro\u2019s supersized, super-emoted Frankenstein has eight nominations, level with Joachim Trier\u2019s much admired cinephile family drama Sentimental Value and there are five for Yorgos Lanthimos\u2019s absurdist eco-nightmare Bugonia with Emma Stone. They are good movies, though not each director\u2019s best.<\/p>\n

But what about British films? Two very good ones are getting their due at these Baftas. Kirk Jones\u2019s I Swear has five nominations, including a best actor nod for its excellent male lead Robert Aramayo, who plays John Davidson, the activist trying to educate the world about Tourette syndrome, which he has had since his teens. It\u2019s a generous and open-hearted movie which has struck a chord with voters \u2013 and it is good also to see a supporting actor nod for the estimable Peter Mullan, as the community centre manager who gives John a chance.<\/p>\n

Intensely British \u2026 Tim Key in The Ballad of Wallis Island, which is nominated for three Baftas. Photograph: Focus Features\/PA<\/p>\n

Then there is my favourite British film of the year: The Ballad of Wallis Island, which has three nominations: outstanding British film, adapted screenplay (it was expanded from an earlier short) and best supporting actress for Carey Mulligan. It is such a lovely, tender film about an eccentric lottery winner and widower, marvellously played by Tim Key<\/a>, who tries reuniting an indie folk-rock duo whom his late wife loved for a private gig on his island. It is a sweet and charming work in the tradition of Local Hero or even I Know Where I\u2019m Going!.<\/p>\n

Perhaps Key also deserved a place in Bafta\u2019s important \u201coutstanding debut by a British writer, director or producer\u201d list \u2013 a category that can mean so much to the nominee. But this list does include Akinola Davies Jr\u2019s vivid and mysterious Nigerian coming-of-age drama My Father\u2019s Shadow and the uproarious BDSM comedy Pillion, taken from an Adam Mars-Jones novel. There is also a snub for Harris Dickinson\u2019s outstanding film about homelessness, Urchin<\/a>, which really deserved some Bafta attention.<\/p>\n

Otherwise, the outstanding British film list has top-quality entrants including Tim Mielants\u2019s Steve with Cillian Murphy, Lynne Ramsay\u2019s Die My Love and Philippa Lowthorpe\u2019s deeply felt H Is for Hawk, any of which is a plausible winner. But I can\u2019t help hoping Tim Key will be invited up to accept his Bafta for the intensely British The Ballad of Wallis Island.<\/p>\n

The 2026 Bafta awards ceremony is on 22 February<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Bafta nominations list underscores the enormous award-season love being felt for Ryan Coogler\u2019s Sinners, his subversive vampire…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":394528,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-394527","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=394527"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394527\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/394528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=394527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=394527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=394527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}