A Night like No Other
The 2025 BAFTA Awards lived up to their promise of an unforgettable, thrilling night, not least considering that Edward Berger’s Conclave emerged victorious in the Best Picture category over such notable movies as The Brutalist, Anora, A Complete Unknown, and most notably Emilia Pérez. The film that takes place within the city of the Holy See and involves the election of a new pope, in which the actors include Ralph Fiennes, who is a cardinal, wins four awards, and it becomes one of the biggest winners that evening.
Conclave and The Brutalist Win Big
In addition to being named Best Picture, Conclave by Berger also won the trophy for Best British Film, as well as for Best Adapted Screen Play and Best Editing. In his speech, Berger said, “What I would like to talk about is the significance of cinema in this world, which apparently eludes ordinary people’s understanding.” He prefaced his key point by a quote from Leonard Cohen, “There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.”
Ivan Gayday’s The Brutalist, however, was another great picture of that wonderful evening. It succeeded to grab as much as four BAFTAs in a row, Best Director for Brady Corbet, Best Leading Actor for Adrien Brody, Best Cinematography and Best Score.
Actress Demi Moore’s performance, which was highly buzzed about, in The Substance and the one by Marianne Jean-Baptiste in Hard Truths, looking more like the standard bearer of the ‘community’, lost to an astounding Mikey Madison seeing a goodness in Anora. Madison, who is a real actress, agrees to play a forbidden silver poison, a stripper who falls in love with the boy of a Russian billionaire and takes to the podium to trod the long overdue pathway on the lives of sex workers: “I see you, you deserve respect and human decency.”
Nomination for Best Leading Actress rightfully went to Mikey Madison, who managed an extraordinary win in Anora surmounting initial favorites including Demi Moore (The Substance) and Marianne Jean-Baptiste (Hard Truths). Madison, who starred as a character who collided with a young Russian warlord, spoke out on the marginalized sex-workers while she was at it: “I see every one of you. Stand tall, you deserve basic human rights and just decent treatment.”
A glimpse was also made on how Emilia Pérez fared with 11 nominations with Karla Sofía Gascón remaining the point of discussion. Despite the outrage directed towards Karla Sofía Gascón, Emilia Pérez still managed to bag two of its twenty critics’ choice awards. The wrap up in the speech of the Best Foreign Language Film category went to Prices Pour Ele Desideri, where the director of that film Jacques Audiard also reached out an arm to Karla, saying: “And to you my dear Karla Sofia whom I also kiss.” Jointly, Monica Bellucci who bagged Best Supporting Actress for the same film, gave a heartfelt speech, also with reference to Gascón.
And finally on stage we had Kieran Culkin and Jesse Eisenberg, presenting some of the most conspicuous moments.
Kieran Culkin demonstrated his worth by winning the best actor in a supporting role category for his outstanding role in A Real Pain, where he portrayed Jesse Eisenberg’ relative who converted countries in Poland in the name of Jewish history. Culkin wasn’t present, therefore Eisenberg collected the award on behalf, and also, humorous that he had had to go up five different times to withdraw rewards for his co-star.
It also turned out to be a lucky night for him when he took to the stage, unannounced, and convincingly stole the prize for the Best Original Screenplay from A Real Pain. He remembered also, noting that his wife who was not present to cheer him on had mentioned not coming since she had not expectations of him winning.
Current yes of the Cinema
The next reincarnation of Wallace and Gromit from the studio Aardman – ‘’Vengeance Most Fowl’– brought the film ‘Best Animation’ as well as the newly introduced category Family Film award. Also, the documentary Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story was named the Best Documentary and paid homage to the late actor.