Staff writer Abigail Curd details how the BAFTAs vote will inform the 2026 Oscars race
The Academy Awards, airing on the 15th of March, inspire much prediction on what movies and filmmakers will win big. The BAFTAs are one of the most important precursor events – used by awards watchers to try and predict what voters are thinking before the big night – and some of the wins suggest where the wind is blowing for multiple categories. The BAFTAs voting body (unlike those of the Globes and the Critic’s Choice awards) overlaps with the Academy’s, although they do award British movies more than the Oscars do. The event also took place right before final Oscars voting opened, ensuring that the winners are fresh in voter’s minds.
Acting
Jessie Buckley for Best Actress is the only acting winner we can comfortably predict. Her performance in Hamnet has won her not only the BAFTA but also other major precursor awards – The Critic’s Choice Award and the Golden Globes – as well as some smaller awards from various film critic’s associations. The other categories are less clear.
Timothée Chalamet won for Best Actor at both the Critic’s Choice and Golden Globes, but the BAFTA went to Robert Aramayo for the British film I Swear. Marty Supreme did not do well at all at the BAFTAS, it lost all 11 of the awards it was nominated for. Perhaps some voters may have soured on the film and Chalamet’s campaign. Alternatively, this could be a result of many major film award’s reluctance to award young men compared to women. The youngest winner of Best Actor was Adrien Brody, who won aged 29, whereas Chalamet is currently 30, a popular and hardworking actor who will almost certainly be nominated again in the future. Plus, he’s going against Leonardo DiCaprio, a famous and beloved actor who has won an Oscar only once and is also 51. Aramayo won’t pose a challenge at the Oscars because he wasn’t even eligible to be nominated (I Swear has not yet premiered in the USA), but a Chalamet win suddenly feels less likely. His biggest competitor is probably Michael B. Jordan, for Sinners, who won at the Actor’s Awards and played two characters, a gimmick which might appeal to voters. Sinners is also an Academy favourite, both the most nominated movie this year and a box office success.
Both supporting categories are up in the air, and the BAFTAs haven’t helped clear it up. Wunmi Mosaku won for Sinners, perhaps a sign of the film’s increasing dominance in this year’s awards season, but Teyana Taylor and Amy Madigan are also strong competitors with multiple awards of their own. Similarly, although Sean Penn won for One Battle After Another, his co-star Benicio del Toro has won at some American critics association awards and there is always the chance that they’ll split the One Battle After Another vote, leading to a win for either Stellan Skarsgård or Jacob Elordi, who have won elsewhere. All that to say- the BAFTAs haven’t been much help in predicting these categories.
Sinners vs One Battle After Another
These two films are the most nominated movies at both the Oscars (Sinners with a record-breaking 16, One Battle After Another with 13) and the BAFTAs (Sinners with 13, One Battle with 14). Although One Battle has been the awards frontrunner since its release, Sinners is one of the most popular and beloved movies of the year. The award for director at the BAFTAS went to One Battle’s Paul Thomas Anderson, who has been making movies since the 1990s, such as Boogie Nights, There Will Be Blood and Magnolia, but has not won an Oscar himself yet. Anderson also won at the Director’s Guild Awards this year. Voters could therefore believe that he is overdue for an Oscar, in a way that Sinner’s Ryan Coogler (who came to prominence as a director in the 2010s) is not.
Overall, it seems that Anderson will win for director at the Oscars. However, Coogler will probably win Best Original screenplay at the Oscars. He did so at the BAFTAs, becoming the first Black writer to achieve this, and the award is often given to movies and writer-directors loved by voters not set to win Director. Best Adapted Screenplay will likely follow the BAFTAs too and go to Anderson (One Battle is based on the Thomas Pynchon novel Vineland). In this way, both writer-directors of the two biggest and most loved movies of the year will go home with at least one award.
The two movies are also competing to win Best Score. The two composers, Jonny Greenwood for One Battle and Ludwig Göransson for Sinners, are well-known and respected composers. Göransson has won twice, once for Oppenheimer and once for another collaboration with Coogler, Black Panther. He also took home the BAFTA and the Golden Globe. Göransson does seem set to win the Oscar, and although multiple people have won three awards for Score nobody has done so in the 21st century. If One Battle sweeps on the night, it isn’t out of the question that Greenwood might win it.
International Feature
One of the most exciting developments in recent Oscars history is the increase in world cinema in Best Picture, in the wake of Parasite’s historic win. Two of the International Feature nominees this year are also in Best Picture, Sentimental Value and The Secret Agent. The last 4 winners in this category also appeared in Best Picture, and it doesn’t seem like that will change this year. The BAFTAs gave their equivalent award, Best Film not in the English Language, to Sentimental Value, which increases its visibility going into Oscars voting season. The film also has numerous acting nominations and wins from precursor awards.
However, the Academy seems to favour The Secret Agent much more than the BAFTAs (it was nominated for this category and screenplay only), perhaps as a result of the film’s late release in the year. It won at many film critic associations and international film festivals, including Cannes film festival, where it won Best Director for Kleber Mendonça Filho and Actor for Wagner Moura. However, it lost the top prize, the Palme d’Or, to fellow International Feature nominee It Was Just an Accident, which did not make it into the Academy’s Best Picture shortlist nor Best Director for Jafar Panahi, which lessens its chances of winning at the Oscars. The Secret Agent, like the previous four winners I’m Still Here, The Zone of Interest, and All Quiet on the Western Front, deals with 20th century history; perhaps the voting body’s interest in these topics will also benefit The Secret Agent over its competitors, all set in the modern day.
Craft Categories
Costume Design, Makeup and Hairstyling, and Production design often go to period pieces, films featuring monsters of some sort, or films set in unique, fantasy worlds, which means that the Academy’s most-nominated film Sinners should be the clear frontrunner in these categories, with its 1930s setting and vampires. However, Frankenstein won all of them at the BAFTAs, making it Sinners’ biggest competitor. It also won at the Art Director’s Guild Awards, the Costume Designers Guild Awards, at the Make-Up Artists & Hair Stylists Guild for its special effects make up, and the Set Decorators Society of America Awards. Although director Guillermo del Toro was not nominated for Best Director, his other films are very popular with the Academy. His film The Shape of Water won Best Picture alongside Best Production Design in the 2018 ceremony, and he is an auteur with a distinct style. Frankenstein was a dream project for him. There is a lot of love for Frankenstein in these categories. It’ll probably beat Sinners here.
Best Picture
The BAFTAs have two awards that could be used to predict the Oscars Best Picture. The first, Outstanding British Film, has ten nominees, but its winner, Hamnet, was the only one to cross over with the Academy’s Best Picture list, which also has ten nominees. The place to look for Oscar predicting is the much smaller Best Film category, with five nominees that all cross over with the Academy. One Battle After Another won here, over Hamnet, Marty Supreme, Sentimental Value and Sinners, all highly nominated movies. Sentimental Value is more likely to get International Picture, which might dissuade people from voting for it, and the Marty Supreme hype seems to be dying down. This is perhaps the result of recent allegations against director Josh Safdie, who was recently accused of fostering a toxic work environment his film Good Time. There is also the possibility that the marketing campaign put voters off.
One Battle After Another is the safest pick here. It won the BAFTA, alongside the Critic’s Choice awards and the Golden Globe (for Musical or Comedy). Sinners is the biggest competitor, given that the Academy gave it so many nominations. Hamnet is probably in third place, having got less nominations at the Academy and mostly winning in awards in acting. However, it did take the Golden Globe’s Best Motion Picture – Drama award over Sinners, meaning it isn’t entirely out of the game yet.
Newsletter Editor at Roar and 3rd year Classics student.
