Best film, best director, best actor? Jane Campion’s Dark Western The Power of the Dog is one of the favorites for the race for the Bafta 2022, the British film awards awarded this Sunday, March 13 in the evening in London.
After an awards ceremony without an audience last year due to the pandemic, it is the war in Ukraine that hovers over the 75th Bafta ceremony this year, which will be held at the Royal Albert Hall in London. The president of the British academy, Krishnendu Majumdar, has already claimed that the Bafta are “solidarity with all the Ukrainian people who bravely fight for their country”.
With eight nominations, the film produced by Netflix, The Power of the Dog approaches the ceremony from a position of strength two weeks before the Oscars. Its director, Jane Campion, is nominated for the director’s award while Benedict Cumberbatch, who plays the main role of a tormented cowboy, is in the running for best actor.
The Power of the Dog also managed to line up three actors for best female (Kirsten Dunst) and male (Jesse Plemons and Kodi Smit-McPhee) supporting roles. Presented at the Venice film festival in September 2021, where the New Zealand director was awarded, the western has since won the Golden Globe for best dramatic film and Jane Campion for best direction.
On Saturday March 12, Jane Campion also won the award for best director at the 74th Directors Guild of America (DGA) in Los Angeles, becoming the third woman to win this prestigious award after Kathryn Bigelow for The Hurt Locker (in French Minesweepers) and Chloé Zhao last year for nomadland.
The feature film, also a big favorite of the Oscars which take place on March 28 in Los Angeles, is notably in competition in London for the best film with the space opera Dunesadaptation of Frank Herbert’s science fiction novel by Denis Villeneuve, which amassed a total of eleven nominations but not the one for best direction.
In this category, two French women are notably in the running against Jane Campion: Audrey Diwan for The Eventadaptation of a novel by Annie Ernaux on abortion which won the Golden Lion in Venice, and Julia Ducournau for her film Titanium, Palme d’Or at Cannes last year. If one of them wins the prize, she will become only the third woman to be crowned for the best direction at the Bafta, after the Chinese Chloé Zhao (nomadland) last year and American Kathryn Bigelow (Minesweepers in 2009).
The three women are in competition with Aleem Khan (After Love)Ryūsuke Hamaguchi (Drive My Car) and Paul Thomas Anderson (Licorice Pizza).
On the French side, the film Little mom by Céline Sciamma is also nominated in the category of best foreign language film. Belfast, by Briton Kenneth Branagh, was nominated in six categories, including Best Film. The director pays homage to his hometown, retracing the journey of a kid from Northern Ireland traumatized by the civil war and who finds refuge in the cinema.
In the category of best actors, we find in particular alongside Benedict Cumberbatch the American Will Smith, for his interpretation of the father of champions Serena and Venus Williams in The Williams Method and Leonardo Dicaprio for Don’t Look Up.
The Bafta for best actress will be played, meanwhile, between Lady Gaga, nominated for her interpretation of the wife of a wealthy heir to Italian fashion in House of GucciAlana Haim (Licorice Pizza), Emilia Jones (CODA), Renate Reinsve (Julie in 12 chapters), Joanna Scanlan (After Love) and Tessa Thompson (Chiaroscuro).
This year, less than a third of actor nominations went to non-white performers, down sharply from a record two-thirds last year, but still above historical averages.