BAFTA has captured the zeitgeist with one battle after another, but let’s hear it in Wallis Island | Baftas 2026

TThe list of BAFTA nominations highlights the enormous awards season love felt for Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, and its subversive take on the black experience in America – although it doesn’t make history in quite the same way as the Oscars, where it received 13 BAFTA nominations, one behind league leader Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another with 14 nominations.

The awards season emergence of Anderson’s anti-fascist epic, inspired by Thomas Pynchon’s novel Vineland, with Leonardo DiCaprio as a disheveled, clueless revolutionary taking on Sean Penn’s brutal Colonel Lockjaw, occurs at an oddly appropriate zeitgeist moment. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents shoot and kill people on the streets of America, and this ugly failure gives us a new character that feels terribly familiar.

ICE Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino, who achieved media stardom at the same moment he was effectively relieved of his command in Minnesota, has an alarmingly familiar buzz, sarcasm and swagger, and of course, like all Maga staff and employees, he is subservient to the commander. He has clear echoes of the tough military man played by Sean Penn in one battle after another, who is tragically flattered when a Masonic cabal of WASP leaders invite him to join their club.

As for cinema’s other intersections with the headlines, there are BAFTA nominations in the non-English language section for Jaafar Panahi’s “It Was Just an Accident,” about Iranian theocratic tyranny, and Kaouther Ben Haniyeh’s “The Voice of Hind Rajab,” about the little girl in Gaza killed by the Israeli army. This category also includes Brazilian director Kleber Mendonça Filho’s The Secret Agent, about a dissident scientist pursued by authorities in Brazil in the 1970s. However, I cannot agree with the intense critical love for this other nominee in its category: the preposterous Serat Olivier Lax, with his Pythonic outbursts.

Josh Safdie’s ping-pong comedy Marty Supreme, starring Timothée Chalamet, confirms its awards season status with 11 nominations, along with Hamnet, Chloe Zhao’s extravagant romantic fantasy about the origins of Shakespeare’s great tragedy The Great Dane. This excellent film has been the subject of backlash – an annual awards season tradition not unlike the official opening of Parliament – and this year from commentators who declared that they did not believe Shakespeare’s Hamlet was inspired by the death of his son Hamnet. I don’t believe it either, but that’s not the point of these lyrical meditations on grief.

Guillermo del Toro’s “Frankenstein” has eight nominations, the same level as Joachim Trier’s much-admired family drama Emotional Value, and there are five nominations for Yorgos Lanthimos’ absurdist environmental nightmare “Pogonia” with Emma Stone. They are good films, although not every director’s best.

But what about British films? Two very good films will get their due at the BAFTAs. Kirk Jones’ “I Swear” received five nominations, including best actor for its excellent lead, Robert Aramayo, who plays John Davidson, an activist trying to educate the world about Tourette’s Syndrome, which he has suffered from since his teens. It’s a generous, open-hearted film that has struck a chord with voters – and it’s also good to see a supporting actor reference the venerable Peter Mullan, as the community center director who gives John a chance.

Then there’s my favorite British film of the year: The Ballad of Wallis Island, which received three nominations: Outstanding British Film, Adapted Screenplay (expanded from a previous short) and Best Supporting Actress for Carey Mulligan. It’s a sweet, tender film about an eccentric, widowed lottery winner, played wonderfully by Tim Key, who attempts to reunite the indie-folk rock duo his late wife loved at a private party on his island. It is a beautiful and charming work in keeping with the local hero tradition or So I Know Where I’m Going!.

Key may also have deserved a place on BAFTA’s important list for “Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director or Producer” – a category that can mean a lot to a nominee. But that list includes the racy, dark Nigerian drama My Father’s Shadow, directed by Akinola Davis Jr., and the raucous BDSM comedy Pillion, based on the Adam Mars Jones novel. There’s also disdain for Harris Dickinson’s outstanding film about homelessness, Urchin, which really deserves some attention from BAFTA.

Otherwise, the standout British film slate includes quality entrants, including Tim Mielants’ Steve with Cillian Murphy, Lynne Ramsay’s Die My Love, and Philippa Lowthorpe’s H Is for Hawk, all of which are reasonable winners. But I can only hope that Tim Key will be invited to accept the BAFTA award for the British film The Ballad of Wallis Island.