“Conclave” won the best movie title at the EE British Academy Film Awards at the Royal Festival Hall in London on Sunday — adding the latest twist to a chaotic awards season in which no one movie has dominated the major ceremonies.
The film, which stars Ralph Fiennes and was directed by Edward Berger is a thriller about the selection of a new pope. It took home four awards on Sunday at Britain’s equivalent of the Oscars, commonly known as the BAFTAs. The other three prizes were in minor categories: best editing, best adapted screenplay and outstanding British film.
In securing the best film award, “Conclave” beat Sean Baker’s “Anora,” a dramedy in which an exotic dancer marries the son of a Russian oligarch, and Brady Corbet’s “The Brutalist,” about a Jewish architect (Adrien Brody) rebuilding his life in the United States after the Holocaust.
It also triumphed over the Bob Dylan biopic “A Complete Unknown” and “Emilia Pérez.”
“Conclave” hadn’t previously featured among the major winners this awards season. It only secured one Golden Globe, for best screenplay, at a ceremony in which “Emilia Pérez” and “The Brutalist” were the big winners. More recently, the momentum for the best picture Oscar had swung to “Anora,” after that movie picked up major honors at this year’s Critic’s Choice ceremony and the Directors Guild of America and Producers Guild of America awards.
Yet the prominence of “Conclave” at the BAFTAs will give the movie momentum going into this year’s Academy Awards, scheduled for March 2. There is significant overlap between the voting bodies for both awards, and the BAFTAs and Oscars regularly have the same winners.
The cast and crew of “Conclave” looked stunned when the best film prize was announced. Isabella Rossellini, who plays a nun in the movie, stood onstage smiling gleefully throughout Berger’s acceptance speech, in which he said he was “deeply humbled” to see his film receive the honor.
In the best director category, Corbet was the victor for “The Brutalist,” winning out over Berger, Baker (“Anora”), Jacques Audiard (“Emilia Pérez”), Denis Villeneuve (“Dune: Part Two”) and Coralie Fargeat (“The Substance,” a body-horror gross-out about a washed-up TV star, played by Demi Moore).
“The Brutalist” had a strong night, taking home four awards — the same as “Conclave” — with Brody winning the prize for best leading actor. In that category, he beat Fiennes (“Conclave”), Colman Domingo (“Sing Sing”), Hugh Grant (“Heretic”), Timothée Chalamet (“A Complete Unknown”) and Sebastian Stan (“The Apprentice”).
In the leading actress category, Mikey Madison won for her role in “Anora,” besting Moore, as well as Cynthia Erivo (“Wicked”), Marianne Jean-Baptiste (“Hard Truths”) and Saoirse Ronan (“The Outrun”).
In her acceptance speech, Madison asked for a moment “to recognize the sex worker community,” adding: “I see you. You deserve respect and human decency.”
Karla Sofía Gascón was also a nominee for best actress for “Emilia Pérez,” although she did not attend the ceremony, held just weeks after a journalist resurfaced some old social media posts in which Gascón made derogatory comments about Muslims and George Floyd, among others.
When Audiard, the director of “Emilia Pérez,” accepted the award for best film not in the English language, he thanked “my dear Karla Sofía” alongside the rest of the movie’s stars. Zoe Saldaña also name-checked Gascón, among others, when she accepted the best supporting actress award. The best supporting actor award went to Kieran Culkin for “A Real Pain.”
