‘Conclave’, ‘The Brutalist’ or ‘Anora’? Race is open at BAFTA Film Awards

LONDON: Papal selection thriller “Conclave” leads nominations for Sunday’s BAFTAs, but faces stiff competition from epic period drama “The Brutalist” and new awards season frontrunner “Anora”, about an exotic dancer who marries a Russian oligarch’s son.

Unlike last year, when “Oppenheimer” dominated, the 2025 BAFTA Film Awards have no clear frontrunner. Odds currently favour “The Brutalist” to win best film, the top prize of the night at Britain’s top movie honours.

British film “Conclave”, which has 12 nominations overall, follows, and boosting its chances is director Edward Berger’s 2023 BAFTA success when his German remake of “All Quiet on the Western Front” won a historic seven prizes.

“This year, it’s a bit more open … it felt like for a while that ‘The Brutalist’ was the frontrunner, but now it seems like ‘Anora’ is coming out there as well,” Digital Spy movies editor Ian Sandwell told Reuters. “So it could be them or there could be a local surprise with ‘Conclave’.”

Many consider “Anora” a strong awards season contender after it and director Sean Baker triumphed at last week’s Critics Choice Awards, as well as the Producers and Directors Guild of America Awards.

Completing the best film list are Bob Dylan biopic “A Complete Unknown” and musical crime movie “Emilia Perez”.

Adrien brody tipped for best actor

Many consider the best director race is between Berger, Baker and Brady Corbet for “The Brutalist”, a three-and-a-half drama in which Adrien Brody plays a Hungarian immigrant trying to rebuild his life in the United States post-World War Two.

Brody has picked up multiple awards already and is expected to win the BAFTA’s leading actor category.

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“I’d be surprised if Adrien Brody did not win…it’s an extraordinary performance,” Tim Richards, founder and CEO of cinema operator Vue, said.

While Demi Moore has been repeatedly honoured for her performance in body horror “The Substance”, she could face upset in the leading actress category from Briton Marianne Jean-Baptiste for her critically-acclaimed portrayal of a woman struggling with depression in “Hard Truths”.

“Demi Moore is going to win at the Oscars probably so she’ll get her moment but it’d be great to see some kind of local talent win,” Sandwell said.

Kieran Culkin and Zoe Saldana are also favoured to continue their winning streaks in the supporting actor/actress categories for “A Real Pain” and “Emilia Perez” respectively.

The Spanish-language film stars Saldana as a lawyer who helps a Mexican cartel leader, played by Karla Sofia Gascon, fake his death and transition from a man to a woman.

It had been an early awards frontrunner but its campaign lost steam following controversy surrounding Gascon, who last week apologised for past social media posts denigrating Muslims and other groups and said she would go silent to help the movie ahead of the Oscars.

“Because of what we’ve seen, what’s happened with some unfortunate messages that have surfaced… it seems to have slipped back a little bit and lost its momentum,” Richards said of “Emilia Perez”, released on streaming platform Netflix. “It might still come back because it’s a fantastic movie.”