BIFA loves "Wild Rose" and "David Copperfield"
Wednesday, October 30, 2019 at 7:15PM
NATHANIEL R in BIFA, Diego Maradona, For Sama, Holliday Grainger, Josh O'Connor, Judy, London, Personal History of David Copperfield, Wild Rose

British Independent Film Awards, or BIFA for short, have announced their nominations for the 2019 film year. Like the Gothams and Spirits they are juried which means a small group of people decide various categories before the entire membership votes on the winners. Strangely, despite that they focused on a small pool of films (the leaders, Wild Rose and The Personal History of David Copperfield have a staggering 21 nominations between them. Yikes! 

Our friend and sometimes Smackdown guest Guy Lodge was on the panel this year and here are their choices.

Best British Independent Film

Bait and David Copperfield have not yet arrived stateside. The latter is coming in 2020 and with lots of name actors it will get some attention (plus it's quite funny) but we had to look up Bait to see what it was. We must keep an eye out due to the BIFA love...

Best Director

For Sama

Diego Maradona is currently on HBO here in the US.

Best Actress

animals

Vicky Knight was recently chosen as one of the “Breakthrough Brits” by BAFTA, which is an initiative honoring people in the arts from crafstpeople to gaming designers to actors. Renee’s Judy was a given but this is a nice honor for Buckley who really was strong in Wild Rose. This is the first we’re hearing of a new Sally Hawkins movie. Give it to our eyeballs NOW.

We haven't yet seen Animals but we've loved Holliday Grainger in a few things now and we know our own contributor Abe will be happy about this since he raved about her at Sundance. 

Best Supporting Actress

Hmmmm. Not sure how Debicki is supporting in a drama about the romance between Vita and Virginia (since she plays Virginia). It's true she takes a little bit of the running time to show up but she's so dominant once she does that this feels like egregious category fraud. Tilda is hilarious in David Copperfield with a powerhouse entrance scene.

Best Screenplay

Lots of love for The Souvenir and David Copperfield with this awards group. We feel like we’ve been hearing about In Fabric for two years now but it still hasn’t had US release.

Best Actor


We're becoming real fans of O'Connor who has been strong in everything we've seen him in to date. Only You is a romantic drama about a young couple.

Best Supporting Actor

The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind is on Netflix and is also submitted for the International Feature Oscar race this year.

The Douglas Hickox Award (Debut Director)


One mystery of the Oscar season: Why is A Shaun the Sheep sequel not in the longlist the Academy released for Best Animated Feature this year. Why would its company not submit it when the original went all the way to a nomination in that category?

Debut Screenwriter

Best Documentary


I saw Seahorse at the Austin gay and lesbian film festival earlier this year. That doc is about a pregnant trans man’s journey to fatherhood. It was my second choice for the top prize in the doc jury I served on for the festival. (The award went, unanimously, to a drama about trans athletes in high school sports called Changing the Game, but keep an eye out for both titles)

Breakthrough Producer

Apparently Three Identical Strangers took a bit to cross the Ocean as its nominated for 2019.

Most Promising Newcomer

The Discovery Award

Best British Short Film

I’ll be interesting to see if any of these compete at the Oscars this year -- now that Oscar has stopped releasing the long list of qualified shorts (sigh) we can only guess as to whether or not they’re in the running.

Best International Independent Film


WOWZA. WHAT A CATEGORY

 

Best Casting

 

Best Costume Design


Without knowing a list of eligible titles we can’t tell if these were the best choices but we do like those Judy costumes. 


Best Cinematography

Hmmm. Cant say that we could have seen these honors coming for Judy or David Copperfield.


Best Editing

 

Best Effects

 

Best Make Up & Hair Design

 

Best Music

 

Best Production Design

Loved the production design of David Copperfield so we’re here for that nomination. Also nice to see The White Crow show up here but why not in Costumes?

 

Best Sound


The sound of Wild Rose lovingly delivers us astonishing vocals from Jessie Buckley for which we must thank it.


 

Article originally appeared on The Film Experience (http://thefilmexperience.net/).
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