“IN HOLLYWOOD it’s the Golden Globes that blast off the annual awards race. Here in the UK, it’s the Bifas. Once a scrappy young spin-off from Raindance, the fiercely independent film festival, today the Bifas (the British Independent Film Awards) are the movie equivalent of the Mercury Prize.
It’s all about the docs
This year, unusually, two of the Best Director nominees (well, kind of three) are documentary makers. Diego Maradona completes director Asif Kapadia’s trilogy about child geniuses and fame that also includes the award-winning Senna and Amy. Meanwhile, Waad al-Kateab and Edward Watts share a nomination for their devastating Syria war documentary, For Sama. Both films face stiff competition in the Best Documentary category, though. First there’s Seahorse, which is about a gay transgender man’s struggles to be recognised as a father. But their main rival is the mighty Coup 53, an astonishing feat of film-making from Taghi Amirani about the 1953 Anglo-American Iranian coup, edited by the legendary Walter Murch (Apocalypse Now).”