The 75th British Academy Film Awards, also known as the BAFTAs, were held on 13 March 2022 at the Royal Albert Hall in London, honouring the best national and foreign films of 2021.^[1] Presented by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, accolades were handed out for the best feature-length film and documentaries of any nationality that were screened at British cinemas in 2021.^[2][3][4]

The nominations were announced on 3 February 2022.^[5] The Rising Star Award nominees, which is the only category voted for by the British public, were announced on 1 February 2022; the nomination and eventual win of Lashana Lynch confused commentators, who did not consider her "rising".^[1][6][7][8]

The epic science fiction film Dune received the most nominations with eleven; The Power of the Dog and Belfast followed with eight and six, respectively.^[5] The former ultimately won two—Best Film and Best Director (Jane Campion); Dune received the most wins, with five, but did not take home any major category awards.^[1][8][9]

The ceremony was hosted by actress and comedian Rebel Wilson.^[10] Many winners were not present to collect their awards, though the ceremony was exclusively in-person. This allowed the speeches of winners who were present to go on at length. While many awards were won by frontrunners in the Oscars race, a surprise win came in the Best Actress category – already populated by no Oscar nominees – for Welsh actress Joanna Scanlan for her performance in After Love.^[1][8][11]

Winners and nominees

The nominees were announced on 3 February 2022.^[12] The winners were announced on 13 March 2022.^[13]

This year, BAFTA did not hand out two of its honorary awards—BAFTA Fellowship and BAFTA Outstanding British Contribution to Cinema Award—as it plans to implement new vetting processes following the previous year's controversy surrounding Noel Clarke.^[14][15]

Awards

Winners are listed first and highlighted in boldface.

Ceremony information

The ceremony was broadcast on BBC One, BBC One HD and BBC iPlayer at 7:00 p.m on 13 March 2022, the day of the ceremony, and was available to stream exclusively on BritBox in North America and South Africa simultaneously with the UK broadcast.^[16] The broadcast was not live with the awards presentation, and some parts were edited out, including host Rebel Wilson ranting about a film production gone awry and cursing the production company.^[1] Wilson was selected as host after having presented an award at the previous in-person BAFA ceremony in February 2020; in his live coverage of the 2022 ceremony for The Guardian, British film journalist Stuart Heritage wrote that Wilson had been the only funny part of the 2020 ceremony.^[1]

While Heritage enjoyed many parts of Wilson's opening monologue at the 2022 ceremony, including jokes about the demise of the BAF(T)As and her own weight loss, he was unimpressed with her wordplay regarding Tom Hiddleston's "low key" (Loki) appearance at the ceremony; Heritage went on to note throughout the broadcast that Wilson's various skits (including drawing nipples on a flip chart, inviting Andy Serkis to defile a cake shaped like Benedict Cumberbatch, and throwing her bras into the audience) were bad.^[1] NME wrote that, while the hosting was troubled, Wilson improved towards the end of the ceremony, particularly her one-liners.^[8] Digital Spy, by collecting popular tweets about the ceremony, reported that many viewers were off-put by Wilson's unfunny hosting, though some enjoyed the fact she did not hold back when it came to topical humour.^[17] The BBC (which broadcast the ceremony) agreed that Wilson's monologue and one-liners were her strongest points, writing that some of her other jokes fell flat, but they thought "on the whole [she] did a fine job".^[18] The Telegraph was instead highly negative of Wilson's hosting and the mismatched tone of the ceremony she created, but praised her ability to "plough on" anyway; it also noted that in coming on after a strong opening song, Wilson was already at a disadvantage.^[19]

The de facto theme of the ceremony was "all things Bond".^[20] Opening the ceremony, to mark the 60th anniversary of the James Bond franchise, Dame Shirley Bassey, who is connected with the franchise after contributing to the soundtrack of multiple Bond films throughout her career, performed a rendition of the title song from Diamonds Are Forever (1971), the seventh installment of the franchise, with NME praising that her voice was as good as ever, writing: "At 85, her voice remains fully capable of filling the Royal Albert Hall to the rafters."^[8][21] Before the ceremony, it was announced that Bassey would perform an iconic Bond theme, only to be revealed on the night.^[22] Also performing live during the ceremony was English actress and singer Emilia Jones, nominated for Best Actress in a Leading Role for her performance in CODA.^[23] She performed a rendition of Joni Mitchell's "Both Sides, Now", which her character sings in the film; she was joined by two translators signing the song in American Sign Language (ASL) and British Sign Language (BSL).^[24]

Jones' performance was introduced by Wilson, who, while welcoming the interpreters, joked that the sign for "Vladimir Putin" was instead universal, holding up a middle finger to the camera.^[25] The same gesture had been made in a different context a week earlier at the 37th Independent Spirit Awards by its hosts, Megan Mullally and Nick Offerman, and presenter Kristen Stewart.^[26] Deaf journalist Liam O'Dell wrote that Wilson's version was offensive to sign language users as it reduced their language and accessibility to a punchline.^[27] Other political humour included Wilson saying she cut a planned musical number about Prince Andrew called "Pizza Express" and a lengthy but earnest joke Serkis made about the policies of Home Secretary Priti Patel while introducing the award for Best Director.^[1][7][19] Serious statements regarding the War in Ukraine were also made by Wilson, following the In Memoriam montage, and by BAFTA Chair Krishnendu Majumdar in his opening speech, condemning the Russian invasion and reading a message from the Ukrainian Film Academy.^[7][15] For the second year in a row, Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, BAFTA President, did not attend the ceremony, instead delivering a speech via a pre-recorded video that aired during the ceremony.^[28]

The acceptance speeches during the ceremony were noted for their excessive length; Heritage found some of them overlong but several of them, instead, moving. He also noted that the speeches could afford to run long because the lack of winners present at the ceremony naturally cut down on speech time; Heritage was more critical towards the nominees for not attending, saying that "they [BAFTA] could have held this ceremony in a minivan for all the people who turned up to collect their awards" and, before the In Memoriam montage, that people featured in it "actually have a good excuse" for not being there.^[1] While hosting, Wilson made a poorly-received joke about the personal life of Best Actor in a Leading Role winner Will Smith and, at the response, commented that it was deserved as Smith had not shown up to the ceremony.^[19][29] The high number of absent nominees may be attributed to the ceremony taking place on the same day as the 27th Critics' Choice Awards, which rescheduled their ceremony shortly beforehand and stated that there were no other possible dates, acknowledging the clash and setting up a parallel venue in London (in addition to usual city Los Angeles) to encourage people to attend both ceremonies.^[8][30]

In a series of long speeches, Lady Gaga introduced last year's Rising Star Award winner, Bukky Bakray, so that Bakray could present the award; Lashana Lynch ultimately won.^[7][31] Heritage was also critical of this, explaining his outlook by noting that Lynch had "already risen quite high", playing main characters in major movies, including Captain Marvel (2019) (plus other Marvel Cinematic Universe entries) and the Bond film No Time to Die (2021), and so her career did not need the profile boost of the Rising Star Award.^[1] NME was more positive, writing that the award "underlines her rise".^[8] Lynch's acceptance speech referred to her family migrating as part of the Windrush generation and how they taught her "about failure, about noes and what noes mean and how to celebrate your yeses", preparing her for the film industry.^[7]

Unusually, none of the Best Actress nominees were also nominated in the same category at the 94th Academy Awards.^[32] Additionally, of the actresses nominated for the BAFA, only Lady Gaga had been nominated at the 28th Screen Actors Guild Awards.^[33] American film journalist Anne Thompson described Joanna Scanlan's nomination in the category as "bizarre"; Scanlan ultimately won and was surprised herself.^[7][33] In her speech, she thanked BAFTA in Welsh.^[11] NME and British film critic Peter Bradshaw wrote that she was a deserving winner.^[8][34] In winning the award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role, CODA actor Troy Kotsur became the first deaf actor to win a BAFA, as well as the first deaf actor to win a BAFTA in a major category and first deaf male actor to win a BAFTA.^{[15][35][36][37]} Bradshaw had worried that Belfast winning Outstanding British Film, and thus being labelled "British", could have been controversial, but was "very pleased" to see it was not significantly so, attributing this to the quality of the film.^[34]

Overall, Bradshaw felt that the winners were "well-judged and satisfying".^[34] Heritage also noted that the BAFA winners at the ceremony gave little fresh insight to the likely Oscar winners, with a mix of frontrunner and left-field wins.^[1]

Statistics

In Memoriam

The In Memoriam montage this year was played to the song "Send In the Clowns" by Stephen Sondheim, who was included within the montage.^[38]

The following appeared: