“Oppenheimer” takes home seven British Academy Film Awards honors, including Best Picture

At the 77th British Academy Film Awards on Sunday, the atomic bomb epic “Oppenheimer” took home seven honors, including best picture, director, and actor, solidifying its position as the front-runner for the Oscars the following month.

The Holocaust drama “The Zone of Interest” earned three accolades, while the gothic fantasy “Poor Things” took home five.

For his performance as scientist J Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb, Cillian Murphy won the Best Actor BAFTA, while Christopher Nolan won his first Best Director BAFTA for “Oppenheimer.”

Murphy expressed his gratitude for getting to portray a character who was so intricate and multifaceted. Playing the wild and vivacious Bella Baxter in “Poor Things,” a steampunk-style visual extravaganza that took home awards for production design, visual effects, costume design, makeup, and hair, Emma Stone was nominated best actress.

Despite having a field-high 13 nominations, “Oppenheimer” was unable to tie the record of nine prizes achieved by “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” in 1971.

Against “Poor Things,” “Killers of the Flower Moon,” “Anatomy of a Fall,” and “The Holdovers,” it prevailed in the best film competition. Along from winning awards for editing, cinematography, and musical score, “Oppenheimer” also garnered Robert Downey Jr.’s Best Supporting Actor nomination.

Da’Vine After winning an award for best supporting actress for her role as a boarding school chef in “The Holdovers,” Joy Randolph said that telling the tales of marginalized individuals like her character Mary felt like a “responsibility I don’t take lightly.”

In what was largely regarded as a historic year for film and an awards season galvanized by the conclusion of the actors’ and writers’ strikes that closed down Hollywood for months, “Oppenheimer” faced fierce competition.

“The Zone of Interest,” a Polish film produced by the British with a cast mostly composed of German actors, won the prizes for best British film and best picture not in English, a first, as well as best sound design, which has been called the film’s true star.

The terrifying play by Jonathan Glazer is set in a family house that is just outside the gates of the Auschwitz death camp, where the atrocities are mentioned but not really seen.

Producer James Wilson said, “Walls are nothing new from before or since the Holocaust, and it seems stark right now that we should care about innocent people being killed in Gaza, Yemen, Mariupol, or Israel.” “We appreciate you recognizing a movie that challenges our way of thinking.”

The Associated Press and PBS’s “Frontline” series “20 Days in Mariupol,” on the war in Ukraine, took home the best documentary award.

“This is not about us,” said Mstyslav Chernov, a videographer who worked with an AP crew to document the terrifying realities of life in the besieged city. “This is about the people of Mariupol, about Ukraine.”