Bafta Film Awards 2021: who will win and who should win
Ahead of Sunday’s ceremony, broadcast from the Royal Albert Hall, Tim Robey offers his verdict on the runners and riders in each of the main categories
Best Film
The winner of the main prize is almost sure to be Nomadland, Chloé Zhao’s haunting panorama of life off-the-grid in America, which connects with themes of worldwide isolation over the past year like no other film. It’s a gorgeous, stirring achievement, and really must win – if it didn’t, it would be a shock. The other options are good-to-average, with Florian Zeller’s dementia drama, The Father, coming in a strong second. The most puzzling pick is The Mauritanian, a stolid Guantánamo exposé whose awards hopes are fast fading – it’s a shame it pushed out the excellent teen drama Rocks, which was popular enough to get seven nominations overall.
Will win: Nomadland Should win: Nomadland encouragement to watch more films, bore extraordinary fruit this year, after complaints in past years of stuffy, white-male-dominated lists. Four out of the six nominees are women, including Sarah Gavron (Rocks) and Shannon Murphy, who wrote and directed the brilliant Australian fourhander Babyteeth. The likely winner is Chloé Zhao for the same reasons as her film; but the Baftas would cover themselves in glory if they recognised everything Jasmila Žbanić did in Quo Vadis, Aida? to make her account of the Srebrenica massacre so urgent and compassionate.
Will win: Chloé Zhao (Nomadland) Should win: Jasmila Žbanić (Quo Vadis, Aida?)
Best Actress
A shock snub in this category for Carey Mulligan, doing wonders for her film as the avenging angel in Promising Young Woman, has left it wide open. Theoretically, her Oscar rivals Frances Mcdormand (Nomadland) or Vanessa Kirby (Pieces of a Woman) – the two white nominees alongside four black women – are thereby thrust forward. But I wonder if voters will be drawn instead to the joyous charisma of a newcomer, Bukky Bakray, who was only 16 when she shot Rocks. No one did finer work, however, than Alfre Woodard, who’d be a phenomenal winner for the death-row drama Clemency. Will win: Bukky Bakray (Rocks); Should win: Alfre Woodard (Clemency)
Best Actor
No one’s going to stop a posthumous Oscar going to Chadwick Boseman for Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, such is the groundswell of grieving admiration in Hollywood. And he was remarkable in that. There’s more than a chance, though, that the Baftas will break ranks – either to pay their dues to the riveting Riz Ahmed in Sound of Metal, or, more likely, to acknowledge that Anthony Hopkins does such towering work as a man with Alzheimer’s in The Father, which has double the nominations Ma Rainey got. A late-career serenading of Hopkins would be the best of the best. Will win: Anthony Hopkins (The Father) Should win: Anthony Hopkins
(The Father)
Best Supporting Actress
Another excitingly diverse category, this is anyone’s guess: casual filmgoers stand a fair chance of having heard of no one. Indeed, but for one name, it might look like a rising-star list, with Rocks’s Kosar Ali the youngest at 17. The veteran is 73-year-old Yuh-jung Youn, a revered actress in South Korea whose Minari grandmother makes a memorably touching impression. Unless the Baftas make a surprise swerve towards the skilled comic improvising of Maria Bakalova in Borat 2, Youn could well have this, and no one would begrudge her – though I might even prefer Niamh Algar’s resolutely tough ex-girlfriend of Cosmo Jarvis’s criminal heavy in the Irish thriller Calm with Horses. Will win: Yuh-jung Youn (Minari) Should win: Niamh Algar (Calm With Horses)
Best Supporting Actor
No one else in this category stands much of a chance with Daniel Kaluuya on the ballot, an almost sure-fire champ for playing the assassinated Black Panther leader Fred Hampton in Judas and the Black Messiah. He has great rhetorical fire and mighty presence – so much presence, in fact, that I dispute whether he’s a supporting actor at all. If the playing field were levelled, my vote would go to Paul Raci, who is precise and perfect, with half Kaluuya’s screen time, as a mentor for deaf addicts in Sound of Metal, directed and co-written by Darius Marder.
Will win: Daniel Kaluuya (Judas and the Black Messiah)
Should win: Paul Raci (Sound of Metal)
A late career win for Hopkins would be the best of the best
The winners of the main Bafta categories will be announced during Sunday’s show