One Battle After Another triumphs at UK’s BAFTA film awards 

The dark comedy One Battle After Another has swept the United Kingdom’s top film honours, picking up six BAFTA awards, including best film and best director for Paul Thomas Anderson.

The film beat the Shakespearean family tragedy Hamnet, and the vampire thriller Sinners, to take the top prizes at Sunday evening’s ceremony.

The UK prizes, officially called the EE BAFTA Film Awards, often provide hints about who will win at Hollywood’s Academy Awards, held this year on March 15.

One Battle After Another, an explosive film about a group of revolutionaries in chaotic conflict with the state, won awards for directing, adapted screenplay, cinematography, and editing, as well as for Sean Penn’s supporting performance as an obsessed military officer.

“This is very overwhelming and wonderful,” Anderson said as he accepted the directing prize. “We have a line from Nina Simone that we used in our film: ‘I know what freedom is: It’s no fear’,” the director said. “Let’s keep making things without fear. It’s a good idea.”

Sinners, which has a record 16 Oscar nods, won best original screenplay for writer and director Ryan Coogler, best supporting actress for Wunmi Mosaku, and best original score.

The gothic horror story Frankenstein won three awards each, while Hamnet won two, including best British film.

The documentary about Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, The Voice of Hind Rajab, was among the top contenders for BAFTA’s best director and non-English language film categories. But the film Sentimental Value won in the non-English language category.

The biggest surprise of the night was Robert Aramayo winning the best actor category for his performance in I Swear, a fact-based British indie drama about a campaigner for people with Tourette syndrome.

The 33-year-old British actor beat Timothee Chalamet, Leonardo DiCaprio, Michael B Jordan, Ethan Hawke and Jesse Plemons for the honour.

“I absolutely can’t believe this,” he said. “Everyone in this category blows me away.”

Jessie Buckley won best actress for playing Agnes, the wife of William Shakespeare, in Hamnet, based on the novel by Maggie O’Farrell and directed by previous Oscar winner Chloe Zhao.

The best documentary prize went to Mr Nobody Against Putin, about a Russian teacher who documented the propaganda imposed on Russian schools after Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

The film’s American director, David Borenstein, said that teacher Pavel Talankin had shown that “whether it’s in Russia or the streets of Minneapolis, we always face a moral choice”, referring to the protests against US immigration enforcement in Minnesota.

“We need more Mr Nobodies,” he said.

It beat documentaries including Mstyslav Chernov’s harrowing Ukraine war portrait, 2000 Meters to Andriivka, co-produced by The Associated Press and Frontline PBS.

The guests of honour at the awards were Prince William and Princess Kate. The event, hosted by Alan Cumming, was the first joint engagement for the pair since William’s uncle, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, was arrested on Thursday.

William, the president of the film academy, presented the BAFTA Fellowship to Donna Langley, studio head at NBC Universal.