Rich Peppiatt’s Irish-language film Kneecap has received at six nominations for the 2025 British Academy of Film and Television awards (Bafta) as Saoirse Ronan has been shortlisted for leading actress for her role in The Outrun, the film based on the 2016 memoir of journalist Amy Liptrot about struggles with alcoholism.
Conclave, starring actor Ralph Fiennes as a cardinal overseeing the election of a new pope, leads the awards nominations with 12 nods.
Netflix musical thriller Emilia Pérez, about a Mexican drug lord who changes gender and starring, Selena Gomez and Zoë Saldaña, is the second-most nominated title with 11 nominations
[ Bafta nominations 2025: Full list of nomineesOpens in new window ]
Kneecap, the anarchic fictionalised biopic of the Belfast rap trio, was nominated for categories including Outstanding Debut, Original Screenplay, Casting, Film Not In The English Language, Editing and Outstanding British Film.
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The Irish Times, in a four-star review of The Outrun, said Ronan gives a forceful performance as an alcoholic in white-knuckle recovery.
Portia A Buckley’s Irish drama Clodagh, starring Bríd Ní Neachtain and Katelyn Rose Downey, which had been longlisted for best British short film, did not make the shortlist.
Joining Ronan in the leading actress nomination category is Spanish star Karla Sofía Gascón, who became the first transgender person to be nominated for a film acting gong at the Golden Globes.
Other first time film performance nominees in the leading actress group include Cynthia Erivo for The Wizard Of Oz prequel Wicked, Mikey Madison for playing a stripper who falls for a Russian oligarch’s son in Anora, and Demi Moore for role in the body horror The Substance.
Also competing in this category is Marianne Jean-Baptiste for comedy drama Hard Truths.
In the supporting actress category, US pop singer Ariana Grande is nominated for playing Glinda the good witch, an early friend to misunderstood witch Elphaba (Erivo) in Wicked.
Also nominated in that category is English actor Felicity Jones for portraying Adrien Brody’s wife in The Brutalist and Jamie Lee Curtis for The Last Showgirl, which stars Pamela Anderson as a showgirl who needs to find a new path when her show closes abruptly after three decades.
The supporting actor category features two former Succession stars – Kieran Culkin and Jeremy Strong. Culkin is nominated for his role in A Real Pain in which he plays a cousin to Jesse Eisenberg who goes on a trip to retrace his Jewish grandmother’s past in Poland. Strong is listed for playing former Trump mentor Roy Cohn in Ali Abassi’s The Apprentice, co-produced by Irish company Tailored Films.
They were nominated alongside Yura Borisov for Anora, Clarence Maclin for Sing Sing, Edward Norton for A Complete Unknown and Guy Pearce for The Brutalist.
Absent from the supporting actor category is Denzel Washington, who featured on the longlist, and was nominated for his role as a bisexual scheming owner of gladiators in Ridley Scott’s Gladiator II.
For the best film prize, the nomination front-runner Conclave will compete against Anora, The Brutalist, A Complete Unknown and Emilia Pérez.
Other films with a string of nominations include Anora, Dune: Part Two and Wicked, all with seven nods, and biopic A Complete Unknown with six.
Nosferatu, based on the 1922 horror of the same name that was slated for destruction after a copyright case was made by the family of Irish writer and Dracula author Bram Stoker, received five nominations, as did the The Substance, which sees Moore portray a TV fitness instructor who seeks to become young again with mysterious injections.
Directors who have been nominated for the first time include Sean Baker for Anora, Brady Corbet for The Brutalist and Coralie Fargeat for The Substance. Also getting nods are Denis Villeneuve for Dune: Part Two and Jacques Audiard for Emilia Pérez.
The outstanding British film category is 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, The Outrun, Kneecap, and Steve McQueen’s second World War 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.
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 16th
Bafta chairwoman Sara Putt said the nominations list was “just such a brilliant variety”.
“But then also, when you look at the 10 films in best film, I think you’ve got six different genres in there.,” she said. “You’ve got sci-fi, you’ve got comedy, you’ve got horror ... you’ve got straight drama, you’ve got musicals, and to see horror, with Nosferatu and The Substance and Heretic, all getting nominated. You know, films with music in them that you can go from Wicked through to Kneecap. It’s an amazing list with real breadth and depth, which is very exciting.” – with PA
Outstanding British Film
- Bird
- Blitz
- Conclave
- Gladiator II
- Hard Truths
- Kneecap
- Lee
- Love Lies Bleeding
- The Outrun
- Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl
Leading actress
- Cynthia Erivo, Wicked
- Karla Sofía Gascón, Emilia Pérez
- Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Hard Truths
- Mikey Madison, Anora
- Demi Moore, The Substance
- Saoirse Ronan, The Outrun
[ Bafta nominations 2025: Full list of nomineesOpens in new window ]
