'Oppenheimer' wins seven prizes, including Best Picture, at British Academy Film Awards

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.

Christopher Nolan won his first Best Director BAFTA for Oppenheimer, and Cillian Murphy won the best actor prize for playing physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb.

Murphy said he was grateful to play such a colossally knotty, complex character."

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, costume design, and makeup and hair.

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 won trophies for editing, cinematography and musical score, as well as the Best Supporting Actor prize for Robert Downey Jr.

Oppenheimer faced stiff competition in what was widely considered a vintage year for cinema and an awards season energized by the end of actors' and writers' strikes that shut down Hollywood for months.

The Zone of Interest a British-produced film shot in Poland with a largely German cast was named both best British film and best film not in English a first and also took the prize for its sound, which has been described as the real star of the film.

Jonathan Glazer's unsettling drama takes place in a family home just outside the walls of the Auschwitz death camp, whose horrors are heard and hinted at, rather than seen.

Ukraine war documentary 20 Days in Mariupol, produced by The Associated Press and PBS Frontline, won the prize for best documentary.

The awards ceremony, hosted by Doctor Who star David Tennant who entered wearing a kilt and sequined top while carrying a dog named Bark Ruffalo was a glitzy, British-accented appetizer for Hollywood's Academy Awards, closely watched for hints about who might win at the Oscars on March 10.

The prize for original screenplay went to French courtroom drama Anatomy of a Fall." The film about a woman on trial over the death of her husband was written by director Justine Triet and her partner, Arthur Harari.

Cord Jefferson won the adapted screenplay prize for the satirical American Fiction," about the struggles of an African-American novelist

Jefferson said he hoped the success of the movie "maybe changes the minds of the people who are in charge of greenlighting films and TV shows, allows them to be less risk-averse.

The historical epic Killers of the Flower Moon had nine nominations for the awards, officially called the EE BAFTA Film Awards, but went home empty-handed.

Barbie, one-half of 2023's Barbenheimer box office juggernaut and the year's top-grossing film, also went home empty-handed from five nominations.

Barbie director Greta Gerwig failed to get a directing nomination for either the BAFTAs or the Oscars, in what was seen by many as a major snub.

The Rising Star award, the only category decided by public vote, went to Mia McKenna-Bruce, star of How to Have Sex.

Before the ceremony, nominees, including Bradley Cooper, Carey Mulligan, Emily Blunt, Rosamund Pike, Ryan Gosling, and Ayo Edebiri all walked the red carpet at London's Royal Festival Hall, along with presenters Andrew Scott, Cate Blanchett, Idris Elba, and David Beckham.

Guest of honour was Prince William, in his role as president of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts. He arrived without his wife, Kate, who was recovering from abdominal surgery last month.

The ceremony included musical performances by Ted Lasso star Hannah Waddingham, singing Time After Time, and Sophie Ellis-Bextor, singing her 2001 hit 'Murder on the Dancefloor', which shot back up the charts after featuring in Saltburn.

Film curator June Givanni, founder of the June Givanni PanAfrican Cinema Archive, was honoured for outstanding British contribution to cinema, while actress Samantha Morton received the academy's highest honour, the BAFTA Fellowship.