It’s been 17 years since the BAFTA awards crucially shifted their place in the awards calendar. For decades, they’d taken place in the springtime, as a kind of quirky afterthought to the glossier Academy Awards, their voting only occasionally accounting for the trends set by other awards bodies: it was a time when films like “Jean de Florette” and “
The Commitments” could emerge victorious in the top races, after sitting out the Oscars entirely.
In 2001, however, they moved back to February, preceding Oscar night by several weeks, and the game soon changed entirely: the BAFTAs joined the ever-expanding ranks of Oscar precursors, eventually changing even their branch-led voting system to align more with
AMPAS rules. Their choices, in the process, have grown less singular too: In the last decade, 70% of
BAFTA’s choices in the film, direction and acting categories have gone on to win the Oscar. Differences in collective taste may still emerge — the British