Yorgos Lanthimos’s black comedy The Favourite is leading the way with nominations at this year’s British Independent Film Awards (BIFAs), with the nominations announced on 31st October. The Favourite‘s list of nominations include: Best British Independent Film, Best Director sponsored by Broadsword Event House and Best Screenplay sponsored by BBC Films. Olivia Colman (who stars as Queen Anne) is nominated for Best Actress sponsored by MAC, with her co-stars in the female-led cast, Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz, competing in the Best Supporting Actress category. Coleman has competition from Weisz who has also received a Best Actress nomination for the drama Disobedience.
Aside from the top nominations, The Favourite also sweeps the technical categories, (which were newly introduced for the 2017 awards), with nominations for seven of the nine awards, including Best Production Design, Best Cinematography supported by Blackmagic Design, Best Make-up & Hair Design and Best Costume Design. Only time, will tell whether The Favourite is crowned champion of all of these categories or whether it’s reign will be short-lived!
Other nominees include Bart Layton’s true crime flick American Animals (11 nominations), serial killer drama Beast (10 nominations), Disobedience (5 nominations), and Lynne Ramsay’s effortlessly cool Neo Noir You Were Never Really Here (8 nominations). Layton and Ramsay are going head to head for the best director award, both have them have had previous success at the BIFA’s. Layton picked up Best Debut Director for his documentary The Imposter in 2012. Ramsay continues her long association with BIFA, with her third nomination for Best Screenplay and her second for Best Director, following past recognition for Ratcatcher, Morvern Callar and We Need To Talk About Kevin.
In the acting categories, we see the likes of Joe Cole (A Prayer Before Dawn), Rupert Everett (The Happy Prince) and Charlie Plummer (Lean on Pete) all picked up their first BIFA nomination, alongside Steve Coogan and Joaquin Phoenix. For best actress, aside from Colman and Weisz, there is competition from the likes of Gemma Arterton for The Escape and Maxine Peake for Funny Cow. The Most Promising New Comer nominees include Jessie Buckley for her role in Beast, Liv Hill from Jellyfish and Michaela Coel from Been So Long.
This year’s nominations list is a record year for female representation, with over 40% of the individual nominations recognising women in the industry across directing, writing, producing, technical and performance. It is worth mentioning that Female nominees make up over 50% of the talent nominated for BIFAs and dominate both Most Promising Newcomer and Breakthrough Producer supported by Creativity Media, with four out of five nominations for each award. Over 140 British films were submitted for consideration and 37 different British feature films have been nominated across the BIFA categories.
Winners will be announced at the British Independent Film Award ceremony on Sunday 2nd December at Old Billingsgate.
For a full list of nominations head to bifa.film