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Sinners may have made history last week, when it became the first film ever to secure 16 Oscar nominations, but it was its awards season rival, One Battle After Another, that proved narrowly victorious at Tuesday’s Bafta nominations.
Paul Thomas Anderson’s counterculture comedy heads into the competition with 14 nominations, while Ryan Coogler’s vampire thriller has 13. Meanwhile, Marty Supreme and Hamnet are close on their heels with 11 nominations each, and Frankenstein and Sentimental Value have eight nods apiece.
British Tourette comedy I Swear earned a surprising five nominations, including a best actor nod for Robert Aramayo; there were also three nominations each for British musical comedy/drama The Ballad of Wallis Island and the Bromley-set BDSM biker romance Pillion.
Shock snubs were largely absent from the announcement, in part because Bafta’s acting shortlists number six, rather than the Oscars’ five – allowing space for names such as Hamnet’s Paul Mescal – and because loins had already been girded for high-profile shut-outs such as Wicked: For Good.
In fact, the blockbuster sequel did not fare as badly as it did last Thursday, when it came home from the Oscar nominations empty handed, instead picking up nods for costume design and hair and makeup, but there was no love for either Cynthia Erivo or Ariana Grande.
Other A-listers who failed to make the cut include Jennifer Lawrence for Die My Love, George Clooney for Jay Kelly, Sydney Sweeney for Christy, Dwayne Johnson for The Smashing Machine and Julia Roberts for After the Hunt.
While Leonardo DiCaprio remains the second favourite to take best actor, after Marty Supreme’s Timothée Chalamet, his seventh mention in the category does mean he now shares an all-time Bafta record with Michael Caine, Daniel Day-Lewis, Peter Finch, Dustin Hoffman, Jack Lemmon and Laurence Olivier. And, given his age and work rate, DiCaprio also appears the most likely of that number to break the record.
Aramayo is the dark horse in the category, but the nomination will significantly boost the profile of the 33-year-old previously best known as the young Ned Stark in Game of Thrones. In I Swear, he plays pioneering Scottish Tourette syndrome campaigner John Davidson. Kirk Jones’s much-lauded biopic – which also proved a moderate box office hit – is additionally up for outstanding British film, original screenplay, supporting actor for Peter Mullan and casting.
The success of that film, Bafta chair Sara Putt told the Guardian, was testimony to public appetite for “moving and authentic stories of lived experience which really resonate”. Meanwhile the continued dominance of Sinners and One Battle further suggests audiences are eager to find points of connection in “a fractured and confused world”.
“Those two films are also a triumph for cinema,” she said. “What you see on the big screen today is an elevation of genre film-making to something that is instructive, moving and thought-provoking – while also being a big, popcorn-movie blast.”
This year’s nominations skew slightly in favour of homegrown films, even outside the outstanding British film and debut categories, with nods for Emily Watson and Carey Mulligan for supporting actress and Pillion and Wallis Island in the adapted screenplay category.
But save for Aramayo, none of this year’s leading acting nominees are British, and nor are any of the six directors up for that award. Only two of these – Coogler, and Hamnet’s Chloé Zhao – are not white, and Zhao is the only woman.
This result, said Putt, “shows there’s still a journey to go on for female directors, and demonstrates the importance of us retaining intervention at the longlist stage”. As part of Baftas’ huge backstage overhaul in 2020, the organisation introduced measures including quotas to ensure gender parity for directors in the initial selection.
This marks the Oscars’ first year introducing some of its own version of such innovations, including an award for casting as well as mandatory viewing in order to be able to vote in a second round category. The Baftas’ insistence that voters watch 15 randomised films continues to bear fruit in terms of the spread of titles in contention: 46 in 2026, up four from 2025.
Deputy chair of the film committee Anthony Andrews added that he was encouraged to note that more than half of this year’s documentary shortlisted films had female directors.
This year’s Baftas take place in a ceremony on 22 February, hosted by Alan Cumming, taking over from David Tennant. The Oscars follow three weeks later, on 15 March, hosted by returning MC Conan O’Brien.
