As British cinema handed out its annual BAFTA awards on Sunday, with less than a month till the Oscars, a gut-wrenching German war film and a grim Irish comedy were the main victors.
The BAFTA academy’s 76-year history’s joint most-nominated foreign-language picture was German filmmaker Edward Berger’s “All Quiet on the Western Front,” which received 14 nominations.
In the run-up to the Academy Oscars on March 12, the Netflix drama won seven accolades, including original score and cinematography, as well as best film and best director for Berger.
When his daughter Matilda insisted that he adapt the stirring 1929 novel by Erich Maria Remarque into a film, Berger thanked her with transforming his “doubts into trust.”
Berger credited his daughter Matilda for turning his “doubts into trust”, after she told him he had to make a movie of Erich Maria Remarque’s powerful 1929 novel, which she was reading in school.
Producer Malte Grunert said the British plaudits for a German-language film were “just incredible”, and it has also amassed nine Oscar nominations.
He claimed that the movie and book demonstrated that “war is everything but an adventure,” making reference to contemporary conflicts like Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The German film matched for the most BAFTA nominations in 2001 with Ang Lee’s martial arts drama “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” which also starred Michelle Yeoh.
Yeoh was nominated for best actress this year for her role in the brilliantly imaginative “Everything Everywhere All At Once” as a worn-down laundromat owner who transforms into a high-kicking heroine.
The sole BAFTA award Yeoh’s kung-fu science-fiction movie won was for editing, despite receiving ten nominations. In “Tar,” she came in second to Cate Blanchett in the role of a disturbed classical music conductor.
“This is extraordinary. I didn’t prepare anything (to say) because it’s been such an extraordinary year for women,” the Australian actress said, convinced that the award would go to one of her fellow nominees.
