The German Netflix war film “Nothing New in the West” has won the British Bafta Film Awards seven times, including the main prize for Best Film. Having previously entered the race with an unprecedented 14 nominations for a German film, this is another unlikely turn of events – and a new record. “Opponents and supporters of the film are equally stunned by how well he did“, he analyses Guardians.
No non-English language film has ever achieved such success at the Baftas. “What a night, I can’t believe it,” enthused Edward Berger, who also received the coveted Best Director award. “It’s a German film for God’s sake, who’s going to vote for it?” exclaimed the 53-year-old. In the subsequent press conference, Berger got confused when counting the awards. “I’m not quite sure anymore. But it’s a lot more than we expected.”
The remake of the novel by Erich Maria Remarque was also awarded Best Foreign Language Film. Composer Volker Bertelmann alias Hauschka received a Bafta for his film music. The film also received awards for Cinematography, Adapted Screenplay and Sound.
Favorite Colin Farrell got nothing, but “The Banshees of Inisherin” received four awards
In the traditional London Royal Festival Hall also sat down Cate Blanchett (“Tár”) for Best Actress, Austin Butler (“Elvis”) won the Bafta for Best Actor in the men’s category. He thanked Elvis Presley’s family for their trust. There were a total of four gold awards for Baz Luhrmann’s biopic. Favorite Colin Farrell went away empty-handed as the main actor in “The Banshees Of Inisherin”. Nevertheless, the tragic comedy by Irish filmmaker Martin McDonagh received four Baftas – for the two supporting actors Kerry Condon and Barry Keoghan and for Best Original Screenplay. The quintessentially Irish film also won Outstanding British Film, prompting laughs.
But the topic of the evening was “Nothing new in the West” and its success, which even long-standing Bafta connoisseurs had not expected. “You could easily blame it on clever marketing,” he writes Guardians. “But this is the one film that made us uneasy about the turbulent front in the east – Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine is in parts a brutal, old-fashioned trench warfare. (…) This vehement and dynamically photographed film has achieved something which perhaps even its creators did not expect – it has awakened our fears of a new European war.”
