Les Miserables And Argo Are Top British Film Academy Award Winners

Les Miserables, suddenly an also-ran in the Oscar race, managed to be a big champion back in the country where it was filmed. The musical won 4 prizes at the British Academy Film Awards-- aka the BAFTAs-- including Best Supporting Actress for Anne Hathaway and technical prizes for sound, makeup and production design. But though it won the most statues, it still lost the top prize to the very distinctly American Argo, which was named Best Film, beating out fellow Oscar Best Picture nominees Les Miserables, Life of Pi, Lincoln and Zero Dark Thirty.

Ben Affleck, not nominated for the Best Director Oscar, won that prize at the BAFTAs, and Argo took home a third statue for editing. That's a huge show of strength for a movie with no particular British ties, and at an awards show that typically favors homegrown talent-- if you want to read it as further evidence that Argo is well-positioned to win the Best Picture Oscar, you're welcome to do so.

As for the other winners, there were several surprises in the acting categories, where Amour's Emmanuelle Riva won Best Actress and Django Unchained's Christoph Waltz took home Best Supporting Actor-- a prize he also won at the Golden Globes. Bizarrely, the only award won by Silver Linings Playbook was Best Adapted Screenplay, a category most anyone would assume was locked up by Argo's Chris Terrio or Lincoln's Tony Kushner. And even though Les Miserables won the most awards, it was still bested in the British Film category by it's much bigger blockbuster competition, Skyfall. I guess poor French rebels can't contend with an English icon like Bond.

On the next page you can see a full list of the nominees, with the winners highlighted in bold.

BEST FILM

ARGO Grant Heslov, Ben Affleck, George Clooney

LES MISÉRABLES Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Debra Hayward, Cameron Mackintosh

LIFE OF PI Gil Netter, Ang Lee, David Womark

LINCOLN Steven Spielberg, Kathleen Kennedy

ZERO DARK THIRTY Mark Boal, Kathryn Bigelow, Megan Ellison

OUTSTANDING BRITISH FILM

ANNA KARENINA Joe Wright, Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Paul Webster, Tom Stoppard THE BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL John Madden, Graham Broadbent, Pete Czernin, Ol Parker

LES MISÉRABLES Tom Hooper, Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Debra Hayward, Cameron Mackintosh, William Nicholson, Alain Boublil, Claude-Michel Schönberg, Herbert Kretzmer

SEVEN PSYCHOPATHS Martin McDonagh, Graham Broadbent, Pete Czernin

SKYFALL Sam Mendes, Michael G. Wilson, Barbara Broccoli, Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, John Logan

OUTSTANDING DEBUT BY A BRITISH WRITER, DIRECTOR OR PRODUCER BART LAYTON (Director), DIMITRI DOGANIS (Producer) The Imposter

DAVID MORRIS (Director), JACQUI MORRIS (Director/Producer) McCullin

DEXTER FLETCHER (Director/Writer), DANNY KING (Writer) Wild Bill

JAMES BOBIN (Director) The Muppets

TINA GHARAVI (Director/Writer) I Am Nasrine

FILM NOT IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE AMOUR Michael Haneke, Margaret Ménégoz

HEADHUNTERS Morten Tyldum, Marianne Gray, Asle Vatn

THE HUNT Thomas Vinterberg, Sisse Graum Jørgensen, Morten Kaufmann

RUST AND BONE Jacques Audiard, Pascal Caucheteux

UNTOUCHABLE Eric Toledano, Olivier Nakache, Nicolas Duval Adassovsky, Yann Zenou, Laurent Zeitoun

DOCUMENTARY

THE IMPOSTER Bart Layton, Dimitri Doganis

MARLEY Kevin Macdonald, Steve Bing, Charles Steel

McCULLIN David Morris, Jacqui Morris

SEARCHING FOR SUGAR MAN Malik Bendjelloul, Simon Chinn

WEST OF MEMPHIS Amy Berg

ANIMATED FILM

BRAVE Mark Andrews, Brenda Chapman

FRANKENWEENIE Tim Burton

PARANORMAN Sam Fell, Chris Butler

DIRECTOR

AMOUR Michael Haneke

ARGO Ben Affleck

DJANGO UNCHAINED Quentin Tarantino

LIFE OF PI Ang Lee

ZERO DARK THIRTY Kathryn Bigelow

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

AMOUR Michael Haneke

DJANGO UNCHAINED Quentin Tarantino

THE MASTER Paul Thomas Anderson

MOONRISE KINGDOM Wes Anderson, Roman Coppola

ZERO DARK THIRTY Mark Boal

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

ARGO Chris Terrio

BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD Lucy Alibar, Benh Zeitlin

LIFE OF PI David Magee

LINCOLN Tony Kushner

SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK David O. Russell

LEADING ACTOR

BEN AFFLECK Argo

BRADLEY COOPER Silver Linings Playbook

DANIEL DAY-LEWIS Lincoln

HUGH JACKMAN Les Misérables

JOAQUIN PHOENIX The Master

LEADING ACTRESS

EMMANUELLE RIVA Amour

HELEN MIRREN Hitchcock

JENNIFER LAWRENCE Silver Linings Playbook

JESSICA CHASTAIN Zero Dark Thirty

MARION COTILLARD Rust and Bone

SUPPORTING ACTOR

ALAN ARKIN Argo

CHRISTOPH WALTZ Django Unchained

JAVIER BARDEM Skyfall

PHILIP SEYMOUR HOFFMAN The Master

TOMMY LEE JONES Lincoln

SUPPORTING ACTRESS

AMY ADAMS The Master

ANNE HATHAWAY Les Misérables

HELEN HUNT The Sessions

JUDI DENCH Skyfall

SALLY FIELD Lincoln

ORIGINAL MUSIC

ANNA KARENINA Dario Marianelli

ARGO Alexandre Desplat

LIFE OF PI Mychael Danna

LINCOLN John Williams

SKYFALL Thomas Newman

CINEMATOGRAPHY

ANNA KARENINA Seamus McGarvey

LES MISÉRABLES Danny Cohen

LIFE OF PI Claudio Miranda

LINCOLN Janusz Kaminski

SKYFALL Roger Deakins

EDITING

ARGO William Goldenberg

DJANGO UNCHAINED Fred Raskin

LIFE OF PI Tim Squyres

SKYFALL Stuart Baird

ZERO DARK THIRTY Dylan Tichenor, William Goldenberg

PRODUCTION DESIGN

ANNA KARENINA Sarah Greenwood, Katie Spencer

LES MISÉRABLES Eve Stewart, Anna Lynch-Robinson

LIFE OF PI David Gropman, Anna Pinnock

LINCOLN Rick Carter, Jim Erickson

SKYFALL Dennis Gassner, Anna Pinnock

COSTUME DESIGN

ANNA KARENINA Jacqueline Durran

GREAT EXPECTATIONS Beatrix Aruna Pasztor

LES MISÉRABLES Paco Delgado

LINCOLN Joanna Johnston

SNOW WHITE AND THE HUNTSMAN Colleen Atwood

MAKE UP & HAIR

ANNA KARENINA Ivana Primorac

HITCHCOCK Julie Hewett, Martin Samuel, Howard Berger

THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY Peter Swords King, Richard Taylor, Rick Findlater

LES MISÉRABLES Lisa Westcott

LINCOLN Lois Burwell, Kay Georgiou

SOUND DJANGO UNCHAINED Mark Ulano, Michael Minkler, Tony Lamberti, Wylie Stateman

THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY Tony Johnson, Christopher Boyes, Michael Hedges, Michael Semanick, Brent Burge, Chris Ward

LES MISÉRABLES Simon Hayes, Andy Nelson, Mark Paterson, Jonathan Allen, Lee Walpole, John Warhurst

LIFE OF PI Drew Kunin, Eugene Gearty, Philip Stockton, Ron Bartlett, D. M. Hemphill

SKYFALL Stuart Wilson, Scott Millan, Greg P. Russell, Per Hallberg, Karen Baker Landers

SPECIAL VISUAL EFFECTS THE DARK KNIGHT RISES Paul Franklin, Chris Corbould, Peter Bebb, Andrew Lockley

THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY Joe Letteri, Eric Saindon, David Clayton, R. Christopher White

LIFE OF PI Bill Westenhofer, Guillaume Rocheron, Erik-Jan De Boer, Donald R Elliot

MARVEL AVENGERS ASSEMBLE Janek Sirrs, Jeff White, Guy Williams, Dan Sudick

PROMETHEUS Richard Stammers, Charley Henley, Trevor Wood, Paul Butterworth

SHORT ANIMATION HERE TO FALL Kris Kelly, Evelyn McGrath

I’M FINE THANKS Eamonn O'Neill

THE MAKING OF LONGBIRD Will Anderson, Ainslie Henderson

SHORT FILM

THE CURSE Fyzal Boulifa, Gavin Humphries

GOOD NIGHT Muriel d'Ansembourg, Eva Sigurdardottir

SWIMMER Lynne Ramsay, Peter Carlton, Diarmid Scrimshaw

TUMULT Johnny Barrington, Rhianna Andrews

THE VOORMAN PROBLEM Mark Gill, Baldwin Li

THE EE RISING STAR AWARD (voted for by the public)

ELIZABETH OLSEN

ANDREA RISEBOROUGH

SURAJ SHARMA

JUNO TEMPLE

ALICIA VIKANDER

Katey Rich

Staff Writer at CinemaBlend