PAPAL thriller Conclave is leading nominations for the 2025 BAFTA Film Awards, with music-themed productions also faring well at the United Kingdom’s top movie honours.
Conclave, about scheming cardinals deciding who to elect as the next pontiff, secured 12 nominations, including for best film, director and leading actor for Ralph Fiennes, whose character, the dean of the College of Cardinals, has to oversee proceedings.
Isabella Rossellini, who plays a nun in the movie, based on the novel by UK writer Robert Harris, was nominated for best supporting actress.
Emilia Perez, which mixes the diverse genres of musical, crime and comedy, followed with 11 nominations.
The Spanish-language film stars Zoe Saldana as a lawyer who helps a drug cartel leader (played by Karla Sofia Gascon) fake his death and transition from a man to a woman.
Gascon got a leading actress nomination, while Saldana and singer-actor Selena Gomez, who plays the drug lord’s wife, were recognised in the supporting actress category,
Emilia Perez, considered one of the top contenders at this year’s awards season, also received a best director nod for French filmmaker Jacques Audiard and was nominated for best film.
Fellow musical Wicked, an adaptation of the stage show, and Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown, were also recognised, with seven and six nominations respectively.
A Complete Unknown will also compete for the awards’ top prize – best film – with The Brutalist, about a Hungarian immigrant who flees the horrors of World War II to rebuild his life in the United States, also in the running.
The BAFTA Film Awards will be handed out on February 16 at a ceremony in London.
