Conclave, Emilia Perez and The Brutalist lead Bafta film nominations

Conclave, starring British actor Ralph Fiennes as a cardinal overseeing the election of a new pope, leads the Bafta film awards nominations with 12 nods.

The film’s star Fiennes is nominated in the leading actor category, where he will go head to head with Adrien Brody for immigrant tale The Brutalist, Timothee Chalamet for Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown and Colman Domingo for Sing Sing, about prisoners becoming part of a theatre group.

Also nominated in the category is Hugh Grant for thriller Heretic, for his role as a sociopathic scholar who plays mind games with two Mormon missionaries and Sebastian Stan scores his first Bafta performance nod for playing Donald Trump before he became the US president in The Apprentice.

Other nominations for Conclave include best director for German-born director Edward Berger, a supporting actress nod for Italian-born US star Isabella Rossellini, as well as nominations for casting, best film, outstanding British film category, adapted screenplay and cinematography.

In a statement to the PA news agency, All Quiet On The Western Front director Berger hailed his “wonderful crew”, and said that being a filmmaker, and his movie Conclave, were about being filled with “doubt”.

He also said: “The only way through is to be surrounded by a team of like-minded people who bond together to strive for the unattainable goal — perfection.”

British writer Peter Straughan, who wrote the screenplay, said he was “thrilled”, and called it a “labour of love from the beginning”.

Netflix musical thriller Emilia Perez, about a Mexican drug lord who changes gender and starring American singer and actor Selena Gomez and US star Zoe Saldana is the second-most nominated title with 11 nominations.

They include a leading actress nomination for Spanish star Karla Sofia Gascon, who became the first transgender actress to be nominated for a film acting gong at the Golden Globes, while co-stars Gomez and Saldana will go head to head in the supporting actress category.

Other first time film performance nominees in the leading actress category include British star Cynthia Erivo for musical The Wizard Of Oz prequel Wicked, Mikey Madison for playing a stripper who falls for a Russian oligarch’s son in Anora, and Hollywood actress Demi Moore for body horror The Substance.

Also competing in this category is British actress Marianne Jean-Baptiste for comedy drama Hard Truths and American-born Irish actress Saoirse Ronan for The Outrun, the film based on the 2016 memoir of journalist Amy Liptrot about struggles with alcoholism.

In the supporting actress section is US pop singer Ariana Grande for playing Glinda the good witch, an early friend to green-skinned misunderstood witch Elphaba (Erivo) in Wicked.

Also nominated is English actress Felicity Jones for portraying Brody’s wife in The Brutalist and Hollywood star Jamie Lee Curtis for The Last Showgirl, which sees Baywatch star Pamela Anderson portray a showgirl who needs to find a new path after her show closes abruptly after three decades.

While the supporting actor category features two former Succession stars, Kieran Culkin for playing a cousin to Jesse Eisenberg who goes on a trip to retrace his Jewish grandmother’s past in Poland in A Real Pain and Jeremy Strong for playing former Trump mentor Roy Cohn in The Apprentice.

They were nominated alongside Russian actor Yura Borisov for Anora, American actors Clarence Maclin for Sing Sing and Edward Norton for A Complete Unknown and Australian star Guy Pearce for The Brutalist.

Absent from the supporting actor category is American star Denzel Washington, who featured on the longlist, and was nominated for his role as a bisexual scheming owner of gladiators in Sir Ridley Scott’s Gladiator II but has not made the shortlist.

For the best film prize, the nomination frontrunner Conclave will compete against Anora, The Brutalist, A Complete Unknown and Emilia Perez.

Also getting a run of nominations are Anora, science fiction film Dune: Part Two starring Chalamet as a son of a prominent family who leads a rebellion against a space empire and Wicked, who are all on seven total nods, and biopic A Complete Unknown and comedy drama Kneecap with six nominations.

There are also five nominations for Nosferatu, based on the 1922 horror of the same name that was slated for destruction after a copyright case was made by Irish writer and Dracula author Bram Stoker’s family, and The Substance – which sees Moore portray a TV fitness instructor who seeks to become young again with mysterious injections after being fired from her job.

Best films nominees include Anora, The Brutalist, A Complete Unknown, Conclave, and Emilia Perez, as most of these movies also compete in the best director category.

The directors who have been nominated for the first time in the directing category include Sean Baker for Anora, Brady Corbet for The Brutalist, and Coralie Fargeat for The Substance, while also getting nods are Denis Villeneuve for Dune: Part Two, and Jacques Audiard for Emilia Perez.

The outstanding British film category is again packed full of nominations with blockbuster Gladiator II getting one of its three nods, while it competes against BBC Christmas hit Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, which sees the return of evil penguin Feathers McGraw from Oscar winning short The Wrong Trousers, The Outrun, Kneecap, and Sir Steve McQueen’s World War II movie Blitz, starring Ronan.

The other nods include Lee, starring Kate Winslet as a female journalist covering the Second World War on the front line, romantic thriller Love Lies Bleeding about a bodybuilder and reclusive gym manager falling in love, Barry Keoghan-fronted family drama Bird, and Hard Truths, which sees Jean-Baptiste as a working-class woman struggling with anger issues.

Notably absent from the Bafta nominations list was Oscar winner Winslet and Nicole Kidman for erotic thriller Babygirl, who had both been on the longlist for best actress, as well as the third instalment of Paddington In Peru, which sees the Peruvian bear travel to his home country in search of Aunt Lucy, and had been on the Outstanding British Film category longlist.

The best actor section also left out James Bond star Daniel Craig for playing a writer pursing a younger man in Queer, Jude Law for portraying a lecherous and cruel King Henry VIII in Firebrand, and Dev Patel for Indian action movie Monkey Man.

But Oscar nominee Patel did score an outstanding debut by a British writer, director or producer for his filmmaking work on Monkey Man, which he directed and also co-wrote.

Bafta chairwoman Sara Putt told PA that the nominations list was “just such a brilliant variety”, as you had horror, comedy, science fiction and musicals all getting nods.

The EE Bafta film awards, hosted by Doctor Who star David Tennant, takes place at the Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall in central London on Sunday February 16.

The event will be broadcast on BBC One and iPlayer.