An epic about the making of the atomic bomb wins seven awards, including Best Picture, Director and Actor.
Oppenheimer, a three-hour epic about the creation of the atomic bomb during World War II, swept the 77th British Academy Film Awards, winning seven awards including top honors for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor.
Sunday's win strengthens the film's position as a front-runner for next month's Oscars.
British director Christopher Nolan, who directed Oppenheimer, won his first BAFTA Award for Best Director for the film, while Irish actor Cillian Murphy won Best Actor for his role as physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, nicknamed the Father of the Atomic Bomb.
In his acceptance speech for the film, Nolan thanked the film's cast, crew, and backers for “embracing something dark.”
He added: “In the real world, there are all kinds of individuals and organizations who have fought long and hard to reduce the number of nuclear weapons in the world… Accepting that, I want to acknowledge their efforts.”
Like Nolan, Murphy was the favorite to win his category, and said in his acceptance speech that he was grateful to play such a “tremendously complex and sophisticated character.”
It was also a good night for the dark, surreal comedy Poor Things, which won five awards including best actress for Emma Stone. In the film, Stone plays a Victorian corpse brought back to life with the spirit of a child by a mad scientist in a female Frankenstein story.
She beat out competition from Barbie star Margot Robbie.
Greta Gerwig's “Barbie,” which turned nostalgia for the beloved doll into a sharp satire about misogyny and female empowerment, has so far failed to pick up a number of expected major awards this awards season.
The Zone of Interest, a British film shot in Poland and starring a largely German cast, won Best British Film and Best Non-English Language Film. He also won the Best Voice award.
The Holocaust drama is set in a family home outside the walls of the Auschwitz concentration camp, where its horrors are heard and hinted at rather than seen.
Producer James Wilson said: “Walls are nothing new before or since the Holocaust, and it seems clear now that we should care about the killing of innocents in Gaza, Yemen, Mariupol or Israel.”
“Thank you for appreciating a film that asks us to think about those spaces.”
Separately, the anatomical drama Anatomy of a Fall won for original screenplay, while the comedy-drama American Fiction won for best adapted screenplay.
The award for best documentary went to 20 Days in Mariupol, journalist Mstislav Chernov's personal account of the siege of the Ukrainian city in 2022, and the award for best animated film went to The Boy and the Heron by famous Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki.
