THE BAFTAs 2024 WINNERS: Robert Downey Jr is awarded Best Supporting Actor while The Holdovers’ Da’Vine Joy Randolph takes home Best Supporting as Oppenheimer leads the early wins

Robert Downey Jr and Da’Vine Joy Randolph received some of the first gongs of the evening at the BAFTA Film Awards at the Royal Festival Hall on Sunday.

The actor, 58, scooped a BAFTA for his role as Lewis Strauss in the Hollywood blockbuster Oppenheimer, which swept the charts during awards season.

The epic biographical thriller leads the first wins with four awards already, including editing and cinematography and supporting actress. It has the most nominations for Britain’s best film awards, with 13.

Robert admitted he owes the award to director Christopher Nolan, producer Emma Thomas and star Cillian Murphy, as well as “British influence.”

He gestured to Nolan and said, “The other day that guy suggested I try a low-key approach as a last-ditch effort to revive my dwindling credibility.”

Meanwhile, Da’Vine was crowned the winner in the Best Supporting Actress category for her role in The Holdovers as she continues her march to Oscar glory.

She took the stage and told the host, “You’re so handsome,” prompting laughter from the audience.

“Thank you for entrusting me with this beautiful character,” she says.

She gets emotional and says that being able to wear this beautiful dress, standing on stage in London, is not a responsibility I take lightly.

Randolph plays school cook Mary in the film, which is set at a boarding school in the early 1970s.

The evening started with the French legal drama Anatomy Of A Fall, which won the Original Screenplay Award after its Cannes premiere in May.

Accepting the award, co-writer and director Justine Triet said: ‘The last time I was in London, a woman said to me, ‘After I saw your film, I called my ex and told him he I had to see it to understand why I dumped the movie. it.’

“Someone else said, ‘Did you put a microphone in my kitchen?’

Triet gestured to her co-writer and partner Arthur Harari and said, “I’d like to make a statement tonight: It’s fiction and we’re doing quite well.”

Harari referenced the plot of the courtroom drama when he joked that he had recently found himself near a window in the attic.

He added: “I want this room as my witness. If anything happens to me, I loved insulating that attic and I’m pretty happy tonight.”

Da’Vine Joy Randolph has been crowned the winner in the Best Supporting Actress category for her role in The Holdovers

Justine Triet and Arthur Harari receive the Original Screenplay Award for Anatomy of a Fall

Following this, the drama film Earth Mama was honored with the outstanding BAFTA debut by a British writer, director or producer (photo Savanah Leaf)

Then the black comedy Poor Things won the BAFTA for special visual effects.

VFX supervisor Simon Hughes said receiving the special visual effects Bafta for surreal black comedy Poor Things was a career highlight.

“It’s the highlight of my career, definitely for me,” he said.

“And to have this happen in such a unique film like this is just a real eye-opener, it was such a surreal and such a rewarding experience.”

Following this, the drama film Earth Mama was honored with the outstanding BAFTA debut by a British writer, director or producer.

Director Savanah Leaf cried as she took the stage to accept the award for her story about a pregnant single mother.

Leaf said “this is crazy” and added, “Our protagonist had never done any action before and she poured her heart into this and she was so fearless.”

The director received the award together with Irish producers Shirley O’Connor and Medb Riordan.

The Zone Of Interest won the BAFTA for a film not in the English language (photo Tarn Willers and Johnnie Burn)

The Zone Of Interest won the BAFTA for a film not in the English language.

Director Jonathan Glazer said it was “an out-of-body experience” to win the award, as he paid tribute to his collaborators.

Producer James Wilson thanked Glazer for his “virtuosity and his friendship.”

He continued: “Walls are not new from before or after the Holocaust and it seems grim at this point that we have to worry about the deaths of innocent people in Gaza, Yemen, Mariupol or Israel.”

He added, “Thank you for recognizing a film that asks us to think in those spaces.”

The casting Bafta has been awarded to Susan Shopmaker for the private school set The Holdovers, while the editing prize has gone to Jennifer Lame for the Second World War biopic Oppenheimer.

Comedy-drama American Fiction has won best adapted screenplay at the Bafta film awards ceremony.

American writer and former Gawker journalist Cord Jefferson said winning a Bafta was “surreal” and that he had his speech written for him because he didn’t think he would need it.

Jefferson said that in a “risk-averse industry,” he is grateful his film — about a novelist who spoofs the “black genre” of books, which becomes a ruse he must maintain — got made.

The Boy And The Heron has won the Bafta award for best animated film.

Filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki is not at the ceremony and therefore the award was accepted by presenters Paul Mescal and Andrew Scott.

Bafta documentary has gone to 20 Days In Mariupol, which highlights the work of Associated Press journalists in the besieged Ukrainian city during the Russian invasion.

Ukrainian filmmaker Mstyslav Chernov said: ‘This is not about us’, this is about the country invaded by Russia and the bombed city they filmed in was just ‘a symbol of everything that happened’.

“Thank you for amplifying our voices, and let’s keep fighting,” he added.