12 Years a Slave Wins BAFTA’s Best Film (and Not Much Else)

Erik Anderson February 16, 2014

Steve McQueen with 12 Years a Slave's Best Film win — Steve McQueen with *12 Years a Slave*‘s Best Film win

It’s another awards show, which means 12 Years a Slave won the top prize but still managed to stumble, hard. After losing category after category all evening it finally bounced back winning Best Actor for Chiwetel Ejiofor (his first major win of the season) and Best Film. One has to wonder though, if Matthew McConaughey had been nominated here would Ejiofor still have won?

Chiwetel Ejiofor winning Best Actor for 12 Years a Slave — Chiwetel Ejiofor winning Best Actor for *12 Years a Slave*

Before these top two wins American Hustle and Gravity had been scooping up prizes left and right, including Jennifer Lawrence’s triumph over Lupita Nyong’o in Supporting Actress. Make up for last year’s loss? Perhaps. But two other losses that seemed like easy wins were Michael Fassbender to Captain Phillips‘ Barkhad Abdi and even stranger, Philomena beating it in Adapted Screenplay.

Director Steve McQueen was not favored to win in his category and he didn’t; Gravity‘s Alfonso Cuarón continued his path to Oscar with a win here. Also securing their Oscar frontrunner status in this final awards push was Cate Blanchett in Blue Jasmine for Best Actress. She’s won everything possible leading up to March 2nd and there isn’t any reason to think she won’t finish strong there as well. Despite Gravity‘s domination at BAFTA (it won 6) it lost Best Editing to Rush. Having recently also just lost the editing award from ACE (American Cinema Editors) to Captain Phillips last week, that category is up in the air for the Oscar.

The winner of the EE BAFTA Rising Star award was Will Poulter, who co-starred in the 2013 hit We’re the Millers. He beat out formidable competition, including Lupita Nyong’o. This award, however, is a public voted award and has also gone to the likes of Kristen Stewart so there’s no accounting for taste there.

Full list of winners:

Best British Film
“Gravity”  - WINNER
“Mandela”
“Philomena”
“Rush”
“Saving Mr. Banks”
“The Selfish Giant”

Best British Short
“Island Queen”
“Keeping Up With The Joneses”
“Orbit Ever After”
“Room 8” – WINNER
“Sea View”

Best British Short Animation
“Everything I Can See From Here”
“I Am Tom Moody”
 ”Sleeping With The Fishes” – WINNER

Best Production Design
“12 Years a Slave”
“American Hustle”
“Behind the Candelabra”
“Gravity”
“The Great Gatsby” – WINNER 

Best Sound
“All Is Lost”
“Captain Phillips”
“Gravity”  - WINNER
“Inside Llewyn Davis”
“Rush”

Best Film Editing
“Captain Phillips”
“Gravity”
 ”Rush”  - WINNER
“12 Years a Slave”
“The Wolf of Wall Street”

Best Documentary
“The Act of Killing” – WINNER
“The Armstrong Lie”
“Blackfish”
“Tim’s Vermeer”
“We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks”

Best Hair & Make-Up
“American Hustle” – WINNER
“Behind the Candelabra”
“Lee Daniels’ The Butler”
“The Great Gatsby”
“The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug”

Best Costume Design
“American Hustle”
“Behind the Candelabra”
 ”The Great Gatsby” – WINNER
“The Invisible Woman”
“Saving Mr. Banks”

Best Original Music
John Williams – “The Book Thief”
Henry Jackman – “Captain Phillips”
Steven Price – “Gravity”  - WINNER
Thomas Newman – “Saving Mr. Banks”
Hans Zimmer – “12 Years a Slave”

Best Animated Film
“Despicable Me 2”
“Frozen” – WINNER
“Monsters University”

Best British Debut By A Writer, Director Or Producer
Colin Carberry, Glenn Patterson – “Good Vibrations”
Kieran Evans – “Kelly & Victor” – WINNER
Scott Graham – “Shell”
Kelly Marcel – “Saving Mr. Banks”
Paul Wright, Polly Stokes – “For Those In Peril”

Best Supporting Actor
Barkhad Abdi – “Captain Phillips” – WINNER
Daniel Bruhl – “Rush”
Bradley Cooper – American Hustle”
Matt Damon – “Behind the Candelabra”
Michael Fassbender – “12 Years a Slave”

Best Cinematography
Barry Ackroyd – “Captain Phillips”
 Emmanuel Lubezki – “Gravity” – WINNER
Bruno Delbonnel – “Inside Llewyn Davis”
Phedon Papamichael – “Nebraska”
Sean Bobbitt – “12 Years a Slave”

Best Supporting Actress
Sally Hawkins – “Blue Jasmine”
 Jennifer Lawrence – “American Hustle” – WINNER
Lupita Nyong’o – “12 Years a Slave”
Julia Roberts – “August: Osage County”
Oprah Winfrey – “Lee Daniels’ The Butler”

Outstanding Contribution To British Cinema
Peter Greenaway

Best Original Screenplay
Eric Warren Singer & David O. Russell – “American Hustle” – WINNER
Woody Allen – “Blue Jasmine”
Alfonso & Jonas Cuaron – “Gravity”
Joel & Ethan Coen – “Inside Llewyn Davis”
Bob Nelson – “Nebraska”

Best Adapted Screenplay
Richard LaGravenese – “Behind the Candelabra”
Billy Ray – “Captain Phillips”
Steve Coogan & Jeff Pope – “Philomena”  - WINNER
John Ridley – “12 Years a Slave”
Terence Winter – “The Wolf of Wall Street”

Rising Star Award
Dane DeHaan
George MacKay
Lupita Nyong’o
Will Poulter  – WINNER
Lea Seydoux

Best Visual Effects
 ”Gravity” – WINNER
“The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug”
“Iron Man 3”
“Pacific Rim”
“Star Trek Into Darkness”

Best Foreign Language Film
“The Act of Killing”
“Blue Is the Warmest Color”
“The Great Beauty” – WINNER
“Metro Manila”
“Wadjda”

Best Actor
Christian Bale – “American Hustle”
Bruce Dern – “Nebraska”
Leonardo DiCaprio – “The Wolf of Wall Street”
Chiwetel Ejiofor – “12 Years a Slave”  - WINNER
Tom Hanks – “Captain Phillips”

Best Actress
Amy Adams – “American Hustle”
 Cate Blanchett – “Blue Jasmine” – WINNER
Sandra Bullock – “Gravity”
Judi Dench – “Philomena”
Emma Thompson – “Saving Mr. Banks”

Best Film
“American Hustle”
“Captain Phillips”
“Gravity”
“Philomena”
“12 Years a Slave” – WINNER

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Erik Anderson

Erik Anderson is the founder/owner and Editor-in-Chief of AwardsWatch and has always loved all things Oscar, having watched the Academy Awards since he was in single digits; making lists, rankings and predictions throughout the show. This led him down the path to obsessing about awards. Much later, he found himself in film school and the film forums of GoldDerby, and then migrated over to the former Oscarwatch (now AwardsDaily), before breaking off to create AwardsWatch in 2013.

He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Hollywood Critics Association (HCA) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.