Christopher Nolan Breaks the BAFTA Curse With Two ‘Oppenheimer’ Trophies

Christopher Nolan finally won a BAFTA Film Awards honor on Sunday, two as a matter of fact, breaking what some admirers had lovingly described as a “curse.”

After all, the director, one of the most prolific and best known British film exports, had previously lost out on picking up a BAFTA trophy. Nolan had received three nominations for his 2010 hit Inception, but the movie lost out to The King’s Speech in the best film race, while David Fincher earned the best director honor for The Social Network and David Seidler won the best original screenplay BAFTA for The King’s Speech.

In 2018, Nolan was also in the running for the best picture and director awards from the British Academy for his 2017 film Dunkirk. In that case, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri was honored as the best film, and Guillermo del Toro walked away with the director trophy for The Shape of Water.

This year, Nolan entered the BAFTA awards ceremony on Sunday with three nominations, for best picture, director and adapted screenplay, for Oppenheimer, bringing his total career BAFTA noms count to eight. The biographical epic led the pack of nominees with a total of 13. 

Early on BAFTA Sunday, the adapted screenplay honor went to Cord Jefferson for American Fiction. But later in the ceremony, Nolan was unveiled as the best director honoree before ending the evening with a second trophy, the one for best film.

“They are very heavy,” Nolan told the press after the BAFTA ceremony while holding the two trophies. “I feel like I am getting a workout.”

Earlier, while accepting one of the awards, he put the spotlight not on himself but on people’s efforts to make the world a peaceful place. Arguing that Oppenheimer “ends on a dramatically necessary note of despair,” Nolan highlighted: “In the real world, there are all kinds of individuals and organizations who have fought long and hard to reduce the number of nuclear weapons in the world. And since 1967, they’ve done it by almost 90 percent. Of late, that’s … gone the wrong way. And so in accepting this award, I do just want to acknowledge their efforts and point out that they show the necessity and the potential of efforts for peace.”

The 77th BAFTA film awards ceremony took place at London’s Royal Festival Hall, which served as the venue for the second year in a row after several years at Royal Albert Hall. Scottish actor David Tennant (Doctor Who, Inside Man) hosted the ceremony.