LONDON — Atom bomb epic Oppenheimer won seven prizes, including best picture, director and actor, at the 77th British Academy Film Awards on Sunday, cementing its front-runner status for the Oscars next month.
Gothic fantasia Poor Things took five prizes and Holocaust drama The Zone of Interest won three.
British-born filmmaker Christopher Nolan won his first best director BAFTA for “Oppenheimer,” and Irish performer Cillian Murphy won the best actor prize for playing physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb.
Read More: How Christopher Nolan Found Intimacy on a Grand Scale
Murphy said he was grateful to play such a “colossally knotty, complex character.”
Nolan noted that nuclear weapons are “a nihilistic subject and the film inevitably reflects that,” telling the movie’s backers: “Thank you for taking on something dark.”
Emma Stone was named best actress for playing the wild and spirited Bella Baxter in “Poor Things,” a steampunk-style visual extravaganza that won prizes for visual effects, production design, makeup and hair and costume design.
Oppenheimer had a field-leading 13 nominations, but missed out on the record of nine trophies, set in 1971 by Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
It won the best film race against Poor Things, Killers of the Flower Moon, Anatomy of a Fall and The Holdovers. Oppenheimer also scooped trophies for editing, cinematography and musical score, as well as the best supporting actor prize for Robert Downey Jr., who played Atomic Energy Commission head Lewis Strauss.
Read More: How Killers of the Flower Moon Captures the True Story of the Osage Murders
Da’Vine Joy Randolph was named best supporting actress for playing a boarding school cook in The Holdovers and said she felt a “responsibility I don’t take lightly” to tell the stories of underrepresented people like her character Mary.
Oppenheimer faced stiff competition in what’s widely considered a vintage year for cinema and an awards season…
