Hollywood's finest walked (or flew) a thousand miles to attend this year's BAFTAs at London's Royal Festival Hall. To that end, gregarious host David Tennant, making his BAFTA presenting debut, rallied the crowds with a live performance of the Proclaimers.
Some A-listers appeared bemused while others clearly understood the challenge – check out the highlights below.
Other highlights included BAFTA Fellowship winner Warwick Davis' moving tribute to his late wife.
The BAFTAs, like the Golden Globes before them, often anticipate success at the Academy Awards (taking place on March 2nd).
Scroll down to discover the key wins, surprises and snubs that may have reshaped the Oscars narrative in 2025.
Conclave's Best Film win blows open the competition
Edward Berger's acclaimed Papal thriller Conclave surprised everyone with its pivotal win for Best Film (one of four wins overall). The film defeated several bookies' favourites including the four-hour epic The Brutalist (which still claimed the gong for director Brady Corbet) and Sean Baker's streetwise, energetic Anora.
What is one to make of this? It depends on the trajectory one has been following. Anora recently scored big, and potentially influential, wins for Best Film and Best Director at the Producer's Guild and Director's Guild awards, not to mention the Critics Choice awards.
These indie circuit awards regularly anticipate success at the Oscars. That said, the BAFTAs are to an extent a glitzier, possibly even more influential affair, and Conclave's BAFTA win indicates its dark horse potential with awards bodies, possibly pushing it ahead of Anora.
However, one shouldn't discount The Brutalist. A BAFTA win for Best Director (one of four wins overall) is no mean feat, likely emboldening Corbet's Oscar chances over Berger and Baker, even though Baker has scored higher with the PGA and the DGA awards.
For now, let's consider this a relatively level Oscar Best Picture playing field between the three movies with Corbet perhaps having a slight edge over his fellow filmmakers. It's nevertheless an interesting development: whereas it looked to be a title fight between The Brutalist and Anora, Conclave has now potentially made things much more interesting.
Conclave also won the Best Adapted Screenplay award for Peter Straughan. The screenwriter, who last won a BAFTA for 2011's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, has been unimpeded during this awards season like Adrien Brody (including a Golden Globe win). Similar to Brody, one can expect Conclave to win the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay.
Best Actor winner Adrien Brody now appears to be a shoo-in for the Oscar
Adrien Brody's Best Actor BAFTA win for The Brutalist was largely a shoo-in and it's expected that he'll now walk away with Best Actor at the Oscars.
There was an outside chance of Ralph Fiennes coming through for Conclave (after all, Conclave's Best Film win wasn't exactly a lock). Certain bookies also had their money on Timothée Chalamet's transformative performance as Bob Dylan in James Mangold's biopic A Complete Unknown.
That said, Brody has had a largely clean sweep throughout this awards season with The Brutalist's intense PR campaign firmly behind him.
Best Actress winner Mikey Madison levels out the playing field with Demi Moore
The BAFTA was Demi Moore's to lose, and lose it she did to Anora star Mikey Madison. This was another big surprise – industry veteran Moore has been hoovering up the awards left and right for her coruscating performance in Coralie Fargeat's body horror satire The Substance.
Many have read Moore's role, as an over-the-hill actress who births a younger version of herself, as an example of the artist as self-portrait. Although Moore has played this down, there's no denying the conviction and strength she brings to the role, redeeming many years spent in the Hollywood wilderness.
Many had anticipated that this classic comeback narrative would cement her the BAFTA as it had the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Comedy or Musical (one has to question whether Globes voters even watched The Substance to designate it as such).
But no – Mikey Madison came through and was vindicated for her tough, sassy yet deeply vulnerable portrayal of the titular sex worker Anora. The success of Sean Baker's film largely resides on the tenacity and humanity evident in Madison's portrayal, and following the BAFTA win this is likely a two-horse race between her and Moore.
That said, The Substance triumphed in the Best Make-Up and Hairstyling category, and it's almost certain to win in the same field at the Oscars. There's surely no better way to honour the squidgy spectacle of the unforgettable Monstro Elisasue.
The two performers are likely to crowd out the rest of the competition at the Oscars including Wicked's Cynthia Erivo. (The blockbusting Stephen Schwartz adaptation settled for significant wins in the Production Design and Costume Design fields.)
A Real Pain now has a competitive chance at a Best Original Screenplay Oscar
The Best Original Screenplay field has been an especially competitive one this year across the Golden Globes and the BAFTAs. It's unlikely to die down at the Oscars, especially given the surprise win for A Real Pain. Don't take our word for it: the film's writer-director Jesse Eisenberg claimed to be so startled that he hadn't even prepared a speech.
Eisenberg's sensitive and intuitive film centres on two cousins, played by Eisenberg and BAFTA-winner Kieran Culkin. They travel to Poland to honour the memory of their late Jewish grandmother, only to discover that deeper recriminations and reconciliations are on offer between the two of them.
The film is a piercing yet uplifting throwback to classic character-driven and dialogue-driven dramas with few visual gimmicks or narrative contrivances. No doubt the relative purity and honesty of the screenplay impressed the BAFTA voters, but let's see if it casts the same spell at the Oscars. A Real Pain now poses a serious threat to pack leaders The Substance, written by Coralie Fargeat, Anora, and The Brutalist.
Each movie is distinguished by strong writing. The Substance channels fleshy mutation to make a grotesque point about Hollywood beauty standards while Anora possesses real verisimilitude in deconstructing the eponymous sex worker's seemingly idyllic fairy-tale marriage to the feckless son of a Russian oligarch. The Brutalist, meanwhile, is a harrowing, sprawling and acute account of the American 20th-century immigrant experience.
Consider this category to be wide open as we approach the Oscars.
Revisit this year's key Oscar contenders as part of our Cineworld Awards Season. Watch several of the key Best Picture nominees for just £5 each (plus an online booking fee).
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