Anderson's Hit Wins One BAFTA After Another

The politically charged thriller One Battle After Another won six prizes, including best picture, at the British Academy Film Awards on Sunday, building momentum ahead of Hollywood's Academy Awards next month. Blues-steeped vampire epic Sinners and gothic horror story Frankenstein won three awards each, while Shakespearean family tragedy Hamnet won two, including best British film, the AP reports. One Battle After Another, Paul Thomas Anderson's explosive film about a group of revolutionaries in chaotic conflict with the state, won awards for directing, adapted screenplay, cinematography and editing, as well as for Sean Penn's supporting performance as an obsessed military officer.

"This is very overwhelming and wonderful," Anderson said as he accepted the directing prize. He paid tribute to his longstanding assistant director, Adam Somner, who died of cancer in November 2024 a few weeks into production. "We have a line from Nina Simone that we used in our film, 'I know what freedom is: It's no fear,'" the director said. "Let's keep making things without fear." Jessie Buckley won the best actress prize for playing grieving mother Agnes Hathaway, wife of William Shakespeare, in Hamnet. She is the first Irish performer to win a best actress prize at the awards, known as BAFTAs.

In a major upset, Robert Aramayo won the best actor category for his performance in I Swear, a British indie drama about a campaigner for people with Tourette's syndrome. The 33-year-old British actor looked stunned and called the victory over Ethan Hawke, Michael B. Jordan, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Timothée Chalamet "absolutely mad," saying, "Everyone in this category blows me away." Sinners took home trophies for director Ryan Coogler's original screenplay, the film's musical score and for Wunmi Mosaku's supporting actress performance as herbalist and healer Annie. The British-Nigerian actor said that in the role she found "a part of my hopes, my ancestral power and my connection, parts I thought I had lost or tried to dim as an immigrant trying to fit in."

The best-documentary prize went to Mr. Nobody Against Putin, about a Russian teacher who documented the propaganda imposed on Russian schools after the invasion of Ukraine. The film's American director David Borenstein said that teacher Pavel Talankin had shown that "whether it's in Russia or the streets of Minneapolis, we always face a moral choice," referring to the protests against US immigration enforcement in Minnesota. "We need more Mr. Nobodies," he said. It beat documentaries including Mstyslav Chernov's harrowing Ukraine war portrait 2000 Meters to Andriivka. Most BAFTA winners are chosen by 8,500 members of the UK academy of industry professionals. The Rising Star award, which is decided by public vote, went to Aramayo. Donna Langley, the UK-born chairwoman of NBCUniversal Entertainment, was awarded the British Academy's highest honor, the BAFTA fellowship.