Daniel Kaluuya, Vanessa Kirby and Riz Ahmed are among the British hopefuls at tonight’s Bafta film awards, which is going ahead without winners and nominees present at the Royal Albert Hall.
This year’s awards are being handed out over two nights in largely virtual ceremonies, with behind the camera categories, including casting and make-up, having been announced on Saturday.
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom scooped two awards – costume design and hair and make-up, with Mank, Rocks and Tenet also among the winners.
Actor, writer and director Noel Clarke was also recognised with the outstanding British contribution to cinema award, which he dedicated to “my young black boys and girls out there that never believed it could happen to them”.
Presenters will attend London’s Royal Albert Hall in person for the main event on Sunday.
The Duke of Cambridge, who is president of Bafta, withdrew from the ceremony on Saturday afternoon after his grandfather the Duke of Edinburgh – Bafta’s first president – died on Friday.
William was due to feature on Saturday in a pre-recorded conversation with costume designer Jenny Beavan and make-up and hair designer Sharon Martin, talking about filming in lockdown and the craft of film-making.
On Sunday, he was to deliver a speech, via video, celebrating the resilience of the film industry over the past year.
The main show on Sunday will be hosted by Dermot O’Leary and Edith Bowman, when the remaining 17 awards will be presented and director Ang Lee will be honoured with the Bafta Fellowship.
Presenters, including Hugh Grant, Priyanka Chopra Jonas and Tom Hiddleston, will appear in person at the Royal Albert Hall, while nominees will appear virtually.
Road movie Nomadland and coming-of-age drama Rocks lead the diverse nominations, where four female filmmakers are in the running for the best director prize.
Chadwick Boseman has received a posthumous Bafta nomination for his performance as an ambitious trumpeter in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.
He died aged 43 last August due to complications related to colon cancer.
Also nominated in the best actor category is Ahmed for his role as a drummer who loses his hearing in Sound Of Metal, as well as Adarsh Gourav for The White Tiger, Tahar Rahim for The Mauritanian, Sir Anthony Hopkins for his turn in drama The Father, about a man slipping into dementia, and Mads Mikkelsen for Another Round.
The nominees in the leading actress Bafta category are Bukky Bakray for Rocks, Radha Blank for The Forty-Year-Old Version, Kirby for Pieces Of A Woman, Frances McDormand for Nomadland, Wunmi Mosaku for His House, and Alfre Woodard for Clemency.
Female directors were entirely absent from the shortlist in 2020 but this year four of the six are women, with nods going to Shannon Murphy for Babyteeth, Jasmila Zbanic for Quo Vadis, Aida?, Sarah Gavron for Rocks, and Chloe Zhao for Nomadland, as well as Thomas Vinterberg for Another Round and Lee Isaac Chung for Minari.
Kaluuya is nominated for his role as Black Panther leader Fred Hampton in Judas And The Black Messiah, and he will compete against Leslie Odom Jr for One Night In Miami, Clarke Peters for Da Five Bloods, Paul Raci for Sound Of Metal, Barry Keoghan for Calm With Horses, and Minari actor Alan Kim, who is the youngest ever Bafta nominee at eight years old.
The EE British Academy Film Awards will air at 7pm on BBC One on April 11.