‘BAFTAs So White’ Further Exposes the Deep Racism, Misogyny, and Classism at the Heart of U.K. Cinema

Awards season is still not over, and in fact has barely begun. At this juncture, the question we must beg of our hallowed competitions is if in future seasons, the BAFTAs (the British equivalent of the Oscars), will get better or worse or randomly and arbitrarily both. It’s a mixed bag of answers depending on who you ask, but this is certain: the BAFTAs’ continued exclusion of black actors—whether British, American, or Lupita—from its major acting awards nominations as well as women from its directing category in a year that brought us Atlantics, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, The Farewell, and The Souvenir (directed by a British woman no less) is unsurprising for the film industry that feeds into it.

That is to say, the British film industry is one defined by racism, misogyny, classism, and selective xenophobia, and individual years and instances of seeming progress do not cancel out an overall history of exclusion and ignorance.

The BAFTAs are not where film-lovers, programmers, critics, or activists should look for recognition and justice. Not even Mike Leigh’s Peterloo, a film with an entirely white cast in period dress, was nominated—perhaps because it is about poor Brits from Northern England organizing for government representation against the Tories.

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