Christopher Nolan has won the BAFTA Award for best director for “Oppenheimer.”
In his acceptance speech, he said that while his film ended on a “dramatically necessary note of despair,” he wanted to spotlight the “individuals and organizations who have fought long and hard to reduce the number of nuclear weapons in the world.”
“In accepting this I do just want to acknowledge their efforts and point out they show the necessity and potential of efforts for peace,” he added.
The British director also said that it was an “incredible honor to be back home, to get this from BAFTA, in the festival hall where my my mum and dad used to drag me to make me have some culture. Some of it stuck. It suddenly occurs to me my younger brother beat me up here by about 40 years not because he’s ever won a BAFTA but because he was part of the snowflake chorus in the ‘Nutcracker’ here many years ago.”
He added, “I have so many people to thank for this. An incredible cast led by our peerless, fearless Cillian Murphy — thank you Cillian, thank you to all the others, an incredible crew, many of you recognized by BAFTA with nominations tonight.”
The filmmaker’s epic biopic of the “father of the atomic bomb,” J. Robert Oppenheimer, has been both a commercial and critical smash hit, earning close to $1 billon for Universal and dominating the awards season. It’s also given Nolan his first ever BAFTA award, having previously been nominated for “Inception” and “Dunkirk.” The director is now expected by many to repeat the feat at the Academy Awards and win his first Oscar.
In the director category, Nolan was up against Andrew Haigh for “All of Us Strangers,” Justine Triet for “Anatomy of a Fall,” Alexander Payne for “The Holdovers,” Bradley Cooper for “Maestro” and Jonathan Glazer for “The Zone of Interest.”