Where my bitches at? No, but seriously – where the heck are they at? Long an essential ingredient in the frothy mocktail of the teen high school movie, the mean girls of movies like Heathers and the original Mean Girls were an over-the-top celebration of bitchery. (“Boo, you whore,” is one of Mean Girls’ most lasting gifts to pop culture for a reason.) That unrepentant vibe was as vital to the formula’s successful recipe as its iconic costumes, cute dumb boys, and killer needle drops.

But those remorseless characters seem to have gone extinct as of late. No longer are we allowed to simply fuck a chainsaw gently. Now we have to have feelings about it. And the girls have to become friends after it all. Where’s the fun in that? 

So, in 2024’s musical version of Mean Girls, our queen bee Regina George (the radiant Reneé Rapp) gets an entire song dedicated to her complicated feelings for her ex Aaron Samuels (Christopher Briney). Suddenly, complex Regina is far more compelling than sweet-then-salty Cady Heron (an underwhelming Angourie Rice) as Tina Fey sands down the sharp edges of Tina Fey’s original film. Tina might be dropping the c-bomb on podcasts, but her characters sure ain’t, perhaps fearing putting off modern audiences.

Yet 25 years ago today we reached what some may consider apex teen bitchiness with writer/director Darren Stein’s 1999 pitch-black teen murder comedy Jawbreaker. Dropping jaws before Regina George was even a twinkle in Fey’s eye, Jawbreaker serves up a technicolor celebration of meanness without a hint of remorse. 

Stein himself called the film “candy color goth,” and it’s easy to see why. ’90s uber-bitch Rose McGowan – fresh off honing her catty chops as Amy in The Doom Generation and Tatum in Scream – stars as Courtney Shayne, the head harridan of Reagan High. And this role strutted McGowan right into the she-devil hall of fame.

Jawbreaker broke the bitch mold.

Courtney begins the movie as the meanest of the mean girls in her clique, alongside pals Julie (Rebecca Gayheart), Marcie (Julie Benz), and “the Princess Di of Reagan High,” Liz Purr (Charlotte Ayanna). But Courtney goes from  H.B.I.C. to homicidal when she shoves a giant jawbreaker down Liz’s throat during a prank birthday kidnapping gone horribly, horribly wrong.

Liz is dead before this trio of teenage pussycats can even pull her cooling body out of the car trunk for celebratory pancakes. A most sour development indeed, but one that Courtney meets with casual, hilariously eye-rolling indifference. (McGowan has said she drew her inspiration from cinema’s foundational female sociopath, Gene Tierney’s femme fatale Ellen Berent in the 1945 Technicolor noir Leave Her To Heaven.) 

With blood on her hands to match her perfectly chosen lip color, Courtney takes the crown as the clique’s queen bee and, unchained by Liz’s do-gooder reputation, is finally loosed to be all the bitch she can be. And her schemes — like her mood swings — are legion. To divert suspicion from herself, she convinces everyone sweet Liz was actually their school’s very own Laura Palmer, with a secret lust for dangerous older men that led to her death. 

And just to make it sing, Courtney frames a local creep (played by international real-life creep and McGowan’s then-boyfriend Marilyn Manson) for the crime. Not only does she have sex with the rando in Liz’s bed to plant the clueless dude’s DNA all across the murder scene, but she also tucks Liz’s corpse underneath the bed as she does the vile deed. (The movie originally got an NC-17 because of this scene, though once Stein trimmed a few of the slow-motion thrusts, the MPAA was placated. But don’t worry — its stomach-churning seediness nevertheless remains.)

Things get even more complicated when wallflower Fern Mayo (Judy Greer) stumbles upon Courtney’s machinations and is drawn into the popular girl’s diabolical web. That’s when Courtney finally commits her most unforgivable crime of all; she weaponizes that most holy relic of the teen movie, the makeover, for evil. Courtney agrees to give Fern the full femme makeover in return for keeping her yap shut. Picture if in Clueless Cher and Dionne had pushed Tai down the stairs after dying her hair, and you’ll feel something close to the correct amount of betrayal. There’s no coming back from such blasphemy! 

Not even the Heathers of Heathers ever got that nasty. Sure, Heather Chandler fucked with the eagles and flew herself right into her glass coffee table. But that was ultimately a dude’s doing. In the end, Veronica finds some form of redemption by blowing up bad boy J.D. instead of their high school, saving the day for all the remaining Heathers and all of the Martha Dumptrucks. 

For her part, Courtney is ultimately taken down by the tag team of reformed mean girls Fern and Julie, all thanks to that cutting-edge ’90s technology known as the birthday card with a voice recorder in it. When Courtney’s murder confession gets blasted for the entire school to hear as she’s triumphantly crowned prom queen, her chickens come home to roost in the form of a rain of corsages coming down on her screeching, mascara-smeared head.

Jawbreaker‘s Courtney is a queen among cinema bitches.

Before she’s forced to do the walk of shame and recreate the album cover of Live Through This (Stein has confessed he did indeed name his protagonist after the lead singer of Hole), there’s something so deliciously liberating in Courtney’s defiant embrace of total and absolute bitchery. She’s our mean girl Prometheus, flying too high and too bright, her make-up and tiara melting from the intense heat of her own destructive power. Her comeuppance gives the movie a happy ending of sorts, yet Courtney gave us a viciousness we could live through vicariously. 

Give us the fire of Fairuza Balk as Nancy Downs in The Craft, smashing that sop Robin Tunney into a wall as she cackles with all the delicious power that the devil’s put in her. Give us Sarah Michelle Gellar grinding on the crotch of her stepbrother Ryan Phillippe and sniffing cocaine out of her crucifix in Cruel Intentions. 

Or to take it back to the ur-bitch, the sacred text from which all modern teen movie bitches are based, give us Nancy Allen as Chris in Brian De Palma’s Carrie. Blowing Billy Nolan (John Travolta, no less!) to manipulate him into doing her dirty business; licking her lips as she tugs on the rope tied to the bucket of pig’s blood suspended over poor pink-dressed Sissy Spacek’s head. Her meanness is an aphrodisiac! Now that’s a bitch who got it done.

There is no Carrie without Chris. There is no goody-two-shoes yin without their equal and opposite bad girl yang. What we make up for with all of these “well-rounded human beings” now we lose in sneering, stomping, diabolically plotting entertainment value. Giving the Maleficents a heart-tugging backstory can only take us so far. At some point you’ve just got to transform yourself into a dragon and burn the whole damn castle to the ground. 

In much the same way that the queer community has come around to embrace the stereotypical “sissies” and villains that were the only representation we had for so long, there can be profound power in accepting and enjoying the retrograde pleasures of watching nasty women take what they want — and doing so unapologetically. (The vector overlap should be noted here; we queers carry a century of cinema’s bitches on our shoulders like they’re our football heroes.) 

So what if celebrating the bitches might not be “good” for us? There’s great good to be had in giving our badness room to breathe. The movies are there for it! They’re meant (at least in part) to be our buried ids safely and healthily unleashed. Our biggest and nastiest fantasies sprung out of our brains, given vivid million-dollar technicolor life. 

And for this it’s in the Courtneys, gum-snapping and gun-snatching, that I will always trust. Because as that queen said herself: Life might be full of sad, fucked-up things, but you are going to walk into that school and strut your shit down the hallway like everything is peachy fucking keen.

The U.S. isn’t the only place that has problems with TikTok.

In a Monday press release, the European Commission (the EU’s executive branch) announced a formal probe into TikTok’s compliance (or lack thereof) with the Digital Services Act. The act, which was approved late last year and went into effect on Jan. 1, exists to legislate against things like illegal content, disinformation, and targeted advertising.

The press release includes a handy bullet-point list of things the EU is looking into, such as TikTok’s potential use of algorithmic systems to encourage addictive behavior, or what it calls a “rabbit hole effect.” In other words, they’re worried about if TikTok does too much to force you to keep looking at it. Other points of concern include privacy and safety for minors, advertising transparency, and proper age verification for users.

The investigation will dive into whether TikTok is effectively protecting children, highlighting age verification as a potentially insufficient safeguard.

If TikTok is found to be in violation of any DSA policies, it may have to fork over as much as 6 percent of its annual turnover, per TechCrunch. In a statement given to TechCrunch, TikTok said it will cooperate with the investigation, claiming it has already responded to previous European Commission requests and even put forward plans for its child safety people to meet with EU officials. According to TikTok, these moves have not been met with response from the Commission.

That’s heavy stuff for an app that’s mostly people doing viral dances.

If you’re watching True Detective: Night Country, chances are you’ve been glued to the screen scanning for clues like we are. And that means you’re onto the spirals.

In the fourth season of the HBO series, this time helmed by showrunner Issa López, police chief Liz Danvers (Jodie Foster) and state trooper Evangeline Navarro (Kali Reis) can’t stop finding these symbols in their investigation.

It’s not the first time we’ve seen sinister spirals in this show. As Mashable’s Kristy Puchko points out, “In Season 1 of True Detective, spirals were a creepy recurring symbol tied to the Yellow King and his mystical murder spree.”

But what do the spirals mean? It’s one of the burning questions we have for the season (along with those polar bears and what the hell that ungodly corpsicle is). Let’s track them down in an act that will make a true armchair detective of us all.

Episode 1

Danvers makes the first spiral in the season herself as she’s processing evidence related to the disappearance of the scientists from the remote Tsalal Arctic Research Station and the murder of Iñupiaq activist Annie Masu Kowtok (Nivi Pedersen). She inadvertently makes a spiral pattern of her printouts, finding her way to the pink parka jacket that will connect the cases before the actual spiral symbol starts showing up. Danvers and Navarro make a similar spiral processing evidence in episode 3.

Episode 2

After the discovery of the corpiscle, Danvers sweeps snow off the forehead of one of the frozen scientists and uncovers a spiral on the corpse’s skin. Later, when Rose Aguineau (Fiona Shaw) is talking with Navarro, she asks whether the trooper saw the shape. When Navarro says she vaguely remembers seeing it before, Rose draws the shape in the snow and explains, “It’s old, missy. Older than Ennis. It’s older than the ice, probably.”

Navarro remembers Annie had a tattoo of a spiral. She shows Danvers a picture of the design, proving the connection between their cases. Danvers begrudgingly follows the lead and asks a former worker from the Tsalal facility, Beatrice (L’xeis Diane Benson), about the symbol, who supposes it to be linked to witchcraft or a “devil sign.” Her colleague Blair (Kathryn Wilder) says she doesn’t recognise it either.

Later in the episode, Danvers figures out that one of the Tsalal scientists, Raymond Clark (Owen McDonnell), had gotten a spiral tattoo on his chest four days after Annie’s body was found. The tattoo artist tells Danvers that Clark cried for “sentimental” reasons when he had it done, and shares the photo Clark gave as a design reference; it’s a photo of the tattoo on Annie’s back, and one that indicates Clark and Annie were lovers.

Now officially teamed up on the cases, Danvers and Navarro find their way to Clark’s creepy trailer, where a giant spiral (among other things) has been scrawled on the ceiling — above a woven, life-sized doll lying on the bed. By the end of the episode, they’ve figured out Clark’s actually alive.

Episode 3

When Navarro is asking hairdresser Susan (Bridie Trainor) about Annie, she mentions Annie had showed Clark her tattoo when they first met, and that he was “fixated on it.” Susan explains Annie came up with the design after seeing the spiral in recurring dreams in high school. “She got the tattoo, the dreams stopped,” she says.

In the very last moments of the episode, when officer Peter Prior (Finn Bennett) hacks into Annie’s phone, he shows Navarro and Danvers a video from it, a recording of her last moments alive in the ice caves we’ve only seen in the opening credits. After a terrible scream, Annie seems to drop her phone, which continues to film the cave ceiling — where a spiral skeleton of some form of prehistoric sea creature can be seen embedded in the ice. Coincidence?

Episode 4

When consulted by Danvers and Navarro, teacher Adam Bryce (Donnie Keshawarz) identifies the spiral skeleton as that of a prehistoric whale, preserved in ice caves near Ennis.

When Navarro and Prior investigate Oliver Tagaq’s (Lance Karmer) place in the nomad camp on Christmas Eve, they find a drawing of the spiral on cardboard on the floor and a stone carved with the symbol, a petroglyph, sitting in the drawing’s centre. Navarro takes the stone and asks the residents if they know what it means — they refuse to answer and stand in unison, defensively. Later, she leaves the stone accidentally at Eddie Qavvik’s (Joel D. Montgrand).

In the dilapidated dredge, Navarro and Danvers find a giant spiral drawn on the walls before they find missing Tsalal engineer Otis Heiss (who survived the same type of injuries as the scientists but earlier).

Episode 5

When Navarro’s doing laundry, Qavvik brings her the spiral stone she left behind, along with his friend who tells her, “My grandpa, he told me to walk away when I saw those. People would leave them as a warning for hunters,” he says. “Places where the ice would swallow them whole.” He’s referring to the underground ice caves they’ve been searching for, referred to as the Night Country.

Episode 6

After finding the caves and chasing their prime suspect, Clark, through them, Navarro and Danvers discover the underground lab where the Tsalal scientists murdered Annie. On the ceiling, they find the whale skeleton, marking the site. Later, when Navarro and Danvers are taking a break in the Tsalal Arctic Research Facility, Navarro reflects on her mother and sister’s tendency to peel oranges in a spiral. Danvers later does exactly this and arranges the peel on her plate in the symbol we’ve seen.

Even later, when the pair finally figure out what happened to the scientists from questioning former Tsalal worker Beatrice (L’xeis Diane Benson), there’s a spiral in her story. When the Iñupiaq women of Ennis herded the scientists into a truck, drove them out to the ice, and forced them to take off their clothes, Beatrice drew a spiral on Annie’s initial attacker Anders Lund’s (Þorsteinn Bachmann) head, instantly connecting the soon-to-be-frozen scientists with the murder — linking Danvers and Navarro’s investigations and pointing them in the right direction.

What do the spirals in True Detective mean?

At its most surface-level, the spiral symbol physically connects the murder of Annie Masu Kowtok with the frozen scientists, including Clark. Beatrice’s decision to mark one of Annie’s murderers with the sign meant Danvers and Navarro linked their cases, but it also led them to discover Annie and Clark’s connection and helped them find the actual crime scene.

But there’s a deeper spiritual thread to the spirals. The importance of the spirals as a warning sign seems to be deeply connected to Iñupiaq tradition in the series — Tagaq’s petroglyph, Annie’s tattoo, Kenny’s memory of his grandmother. As Rose says, it’s an ancient symbol, which means historically there are loads of interpretations. Annie saw the symbol in recurring dreams then had it tattooed on her body, which feels like a bleak premonition of her death, and Clark became obsessed with the symbol after her death, so perhaps he felt warned of his own doom amid his guilt.

But this is also True Detective, with its insistence on a “time is a flat circle” philosophy and the inevitability of events. The spiral (which is almost literally a flat circle) could be a marker for the never-ending cycle of violence, only this time, it’s one that has an actual end.

How to watch: True Detective airs Sunday nights on HBO/Max at 9 p.m ET/PT.

Lost called, it wants its polar bear back.

One of the many mysteries of True Detective: Night Country is embodied by one of the cutest and deadliest animals on the planet: the majestic and terrifying polar bear.

In the fictional town of Ennis, Alaska, 150 miles north of the Arctic Circle, during “the long night”, this enormous pagophilic carnivore turns up again and again. It wanders through town in very real form; it appears in characters’ homes in plush toy form; images of it flash at us during the opening credits. While these bears don’t have anything to do with their island-dwelling kin in Lost, they strike the same chord of mystery in True Detective.

What’s the deal with the polar bears and why are they important to the story? Each week, we tracked the polar bears of Night Country, tracing their appearances to pull this whole thing together with red yarn.

Opening credits bears

In the True Detective: Night Country opening credits, we see a rocking chair perched on the side of the icy road. A plush polar bear sits on the chair, with a close-up revealing it’s missing an eye. Seconds later, a polar bear wanders onto the road, and another close-up shows it, too, is missing an eye. The plush polar bear is clearly important, as it appears later in the credits, floating in icy dark water. And of course, it turns up in the show from the very first episode.

The plush polar bear

In episode 1, Chief Liz Danvers (Jodie Foster) is woken up in the middle of the night to a fervent whisper declaring, “She’s awake,” (the same thing scientist Raymond Clark (Owen McDonnell) says in the Tsalal Arctic Research Facility on the night when it all goes down). The scene comes after what seems to be a memory or a dream for Danvers, involving a child who is later revealed to be her son Holden, who died in a car accident years earlier — we get more fragments of this tragic event through Navarro’s visions in the series and Danvers’ flashback in the finale. In her dream, his hand touches her shoulder. Bleary-eyed, Danvers finds a plush polar bear toy on the floor in her room. It’s missing an eye, and Danvers holds it looking pretty unsettled.

In episode 2, Danvers finds Holden’s bear in a box of Christmas decorations, and has a flashback to time spent with him, playing with the bear and listening to The Beatles’ “Twist and Shout” (the song that triggers Danvers in episode 1, the one that features in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, the film the Tsalal scientists were watching when they disappeared).

In episode 3, when state trooper Evangeline Navarro (Kali Reis) is out on the ice, she hears an eerie voice singing “Twist and Shout” in the wind. Navarro then sees a child running into the darkness and goes to catch up to them but slips and hits her head. She’s transported to a vision of her time served in the military, sitting beside a burned home. A child wearing pyjamas and holding a plush polar bear puts their hand on Navarro’s shoulder and whispers, “Tell my mommy.” It’s clearly Holden.

In episode 4, when Navarro visits Danvers and she drops a box of Christmas decorations on the floor, she sees the plush polar bear toy fall out and remembers her vision. “Is this his? Holden’s?” she asks, naming Danvers’ child. To demonstrate her cynicism about spirituality and the beyond, Danvers throws the plush bear out in the snow.

In the final episode, Navarro tells Danvers she’s seen Holden in her visions. At the end of the episode, when Danvers enters Navarro’s empty cabin, she finds Holden’s polar bear sitting on the stripped bed — Navarro obviously went and picked it up from Danvers’ front yard after she threw it.

The polar bear in the middle of the road

As Navarro investigates leads in town in Ennis in episode 1, she’s driving around, calling potential witnesses and contacts, when her phone stops working. A voice whispers the same hissing “she’s awake” message Danvers heard in her dream and Navarro hits the brakes. A large polar bear stands in the road, blocking her path and notably missing an eye. Standing its ground with a growl, the bear then retreats. As there are no other witnesses to this bear, it’s ambiguous whether Navarro is looking at a real polar pal or not — but then episodes later, Danvers sees the same one-eyed bear.

In episode 4, driving on Christmas Eve, Danvers sees the polar bear standing in the middle of the highway, hitting the brakes to avoid it and plunging her car into a snow drift. The bear prowls over to Danvers’ window and stares directly at her, breathing heavily, then moving along. In this scene, the polar bear seems very real.

What do the polar bears mean in True Detective?

The polar bears in True Detective: Night Country serve primarily to connect Danvers and Navarro on a spiritual level. They’re the only two people who encounter the one-eyed polar bear in Ennis, and it’s undoubtedly a vision connected to Holden’s favourite toy.

Danvers has carried her loss for so long without processing it, and though she’s not a spiritual person, she eventually finds relief in Navarro’s own experience with death and her connection with the beyond. These beautiful beasts of the Alaskan ice serve to connect these two very different investigators and to help Danvers actually grieve for her son.

True Detective: Night Country is now streaming on Max.

After arriving with a dog in tow, BAFTAs 2024 host David Tennant gave a six-minute monologue cracking jokes about Saltburn, the acting industry, and the upcoming presidential race.

“It’s obviously been a tumultuous year for so many in the film industry with the writers’ strike and the actors’ strike, but I’ve been chatting to BAFTA and asking, ‘Is the future for screenwriters and actors looking rosy?'” Tennant says in the clip above. “And I can tell you, they said ‘Aye!’ Although they do spell that “AI”, so I don’t…”

A short while later Tennant also gets a solid dig in about the upcoming U.S. elections.

“Poor Things, ladies and gentlemen,” he says, introducing the movie, “where a child’s brain is put into an adult’s body. And later this year, one of those may even be re-elected president.”

You can see the full list of BAFTAs 2024 winners here.

Are you watching True Detective: Night Country and have a lot of questions? You’re in good, obsessive company if you’re scanning for clues like we are.

In the depths of this cold, cold winter, Mashable has been spending “the long night” yarn-walling it, speaking to the folks behind the HBO show, and watching the series frame by frame so you don’t miss a spiral, polar bear, John Carpenter reference, or confirmed fan theory.

In the fourth season of the HBO series, this time helmed by showrunner Issa López, police Chief Liz Danvers (Jodie Foster) and state trooper Evangeline Navarro (Kali Reis) have one hell of a chilling investigation on their hands — and we’ve gone absolutely yarn-wall on it ourselves. Read it all!

Everything to know about True Detective: Night Country — before you watch

• Watch the trailer

• Read Mashable’s True Detective: Night Country review

• Find out: Is the long night a real thing?

• Heed our warning about episode 2 — trust us

How was True Detective: Night Country made?

• How the corpsicle was brought to life

• The most WTF moment in the series — and how it was made

• Isabella Star LaBlanc and Anna Lambe on Indigenous representation in the series

Every clue, tracked

• Every opening credits clue you may have missed

• What’s deal with the spirals?

• Is Travis the father of Rust Cohle?

• How writer/director Issa López could be a clue to True Detective: Night Country‘s mystery

• What’s with the polar bears?

• How the Dyatlov Pass incident ties in

• Season 4: Burning questions explored

• Episode 5 has a very dark, very important scene

About that finale…

• Who killed the scientists?

• What actually happened to Navarro?

• Was time travel involved?

What to watch after True Detective: Night Country

• This episode of The X-Files

• John Carpenter’s The Thing

How to watch True Detective: Night Country

True Detective airs Sunday nights on HBO/Max at 9 p.m ET/PT.

The Mini is a bite-sized version of The New York Times‘ revered daily crossword. While the crossword is a lengthier experience that requires both knowledge and patience to complete, The Mini is an entirely different vibe.

With only a handful of clues to answer, the daily puzzle doubles as a speed-running test for many who play it.

So, when a tricky clue disrupts a player’s flow, it can be frustrating! If you find yourself stumped playing The Mini — much like with Wordle and Connections — we have you covered.

Here are the clues and answers to NYT’s The Mini for Monday, Feb. 19, 2024:

Across

1993 movie starring Kevin Kline as the stand-in president

• The answer is Dave.

What humans can see that whales and sharks cannot

• The answer is color.

Mario’s pal

• The answer is Luigi.

Copy of a magazine

• The answer is issue.

St. ___ (neighboring city to Tampa)

• The answer is Pete.

Down

Soak

• The answer is Douse.

Top-rate, as a celebrity

• The answer is alist.

Major fashion magazine

• The answer is Vogue.

Alphabetically, the first of the Great Lakes

• The answer is Erie.

Section of a longer video

• The answer is clip.

Apple is facing a first-ever fine, which Brussels is set to announce next month.

The company will reportedly be fined around €500 million ($539m) for allegedly breaking EU law. This follows a European Commission antitrust probe looking into whether or not the tech giant used its platform to favor its music streaming service over others. The investigation was launched in 2019, after Spotify made a formal complaint to regulators that the App Store prevents users from seeing cheaper alternatives to their own Apple Music.

Spotify kicked off their campaign with a website to promote their cause, which is still regularly updated. The music streaming platform outlined five reasons as to why Apple “doesn’t play fair”, like the fact Apple adds a discriminatory tax of 30 percent to only certain apps and how the App Store “routinely reject” Spotify’s app enhancements, bug fixes, and new improvements.

According to the Financial Times, the Commission will accuse of Apple of unfairly abusing its powerful position to implement anti-competitive trading practices, and also ban Apple’s “practice of blocking music services from letting users outside its App Store switch to cheaper alternatives.”

This is a first-ever fine from the EU, but Apple was hit with a €1.1bn fine in France, also for alleged anti-competitive behavior. The fine was lowered to €372mn after an appeal.

The EU has been pushing back against big tech firms that hold a monopoly over the market, aiming to open competition and give space to smaller companies in this space through its Digital Markets Act which will also be imposed next month. These six gatekeepers – Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, ByteDance, Meta, and Microsoft – will have to comply.

David Tennant made a dramatic entrance to the BAFTAs on Sunday night, and he came armed with Michael Sheen’s dog.

In the amusing open sketch above, the Doctor Who star and host of the awards show takes a series of Zoom calls with different celebrities – including Tom Hiddleston and Dame Judy Dench – in an attempt to persuade them to look after Sheen’s dog, after his Good Omens co-star forced him to keep a previously arranged dog-sitting commitment.

In the end, when nobody can help, there’s only one thing for it: Keep the hosting gig, and bring the dog.

You can see the full list of BAFTAs 2024 winners here.

First it was the Golden Globes, then it was the Critics’ Choice Awards. Now it’s Britain’s turn to celebrate the film industry, with the 77th British Academy Film Awards (BAFTAs) held in London this Sunday.

Hosted by the Tenth and Fourteenth Doctor David Tennant, the 2024 BAFTAs took place at the Royal Festival Hall. Leading both the nominee and winners’ lists was Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, which scooped up seven of the 13 awards it was up for — including Best Film and Best Director. Poor Things followed with 11 nominations and five wins, while Zone of Interest won three of its nine categories. Killers of the Flower Moon was up for nine awards, but sadly left empty handed.

Singer Sophie Ellis-Bextor also made an appearance to perform her 2001 UK hit “Murder on the Dancefloor,” which gained US attention this year after being featured in Saltburn. Unfortunately Saltburn didn’t take home any of the five awards it was nominated for.

Here is the full list of nominees and winners at the 2024 BAFTAs. Winners in each category have been bolded. U.S. viewers can catch up with the awards ceremony on BritBox International.

Best Film

• Anatomy of a Fall

• The Holdovers

• Killers of the Flower Moon

• Oppenheimer

• Poor Things

Outstanding British Film

• All of Us Strangers

• How to Have Sex

• Napoleon

• The Old Oak

• Poor Things

• Rye Lane

• Saltburn

• Scrapper

• Wonka

• The Zone of Interest

Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director, or Producer

• Blue Bag Life – Lisa Selby (director), Rebecca Lloyd-Evans (director, producer), Alex Fry (producer)

• Bobi Wine: The People’s President – Christopher Sharp (director) [also directed by Moses Bwayo]

• Earth Mama – Savanah Leaf (writer, director, producer), Shirley O’Connor (producer), Medb Riordan (producer)

• How to Have Sex – Molly Manning Walker (writer, director)

• Is There Anybody Out There? – Ella Glendining (director)

Best Film Not in the English Language

• 20 Days in Mariupol

• Anatomy of a Fall

• Past Lives

• Society of the Snow

• The Zone of Interest

Best Documentary

• 20 Days in Mariupol

• American Symphony

• Beyond Utopia

• Still: A Michael J Fox Movie

• Wham!

Best Animated Film

• The Boy and the Heron

• Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget

• Elemental

• Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

Best Director

• Andrew Haigh (All of Us Strangers)

• Justine Triet (Anatomy of a Fall)

• Alexander Payne (The Holdovers)

• Bradley Cooper (Maestro)

• Christopher Nolan (Oppenheimer)

• Jonathan Glazer (The Zone of Interest)

Best Original Screenplay

• Anatomy of a Fall

• Barbie

• The Holdovers

• Maestro

• Past Lives

Best Adapted Screenplay

• All of Us Strangers

• American Fiction

• Oppenheimer

• Poor Things

• The Zone of Interest

Best Leading Actress

• Fantasia Barrino (The Color Purple)

• Sandra Hüller (Anatomy of a Fall)

• Carey Mulligan (Maestro)

• Vivian Oparah (Rye Lane)

• Margot Robbie (Barbie)

• Emma Stone (Poor Things)

Best Leading Actor

• Bradley Cooper (Maestro)

• Colman Domingo (Rustin)

• Paul Giamatti (The Holdovers)

• Barry Keoghan (Saltburn)

• Cillian Murphy (Oppenheimer)

• Teo Yoo (Past Lives)

Best Supporting Actress

• Emily Blunt (Oppenheimer)

• Danielle Brooks (The Color Purple)

• Claire Foy (All of Us Strangers)

• Sandra Hüller (The Zone of Interest)

• Rosamund Pike (Saltburn)

• Da’Vine Joy Randolph (The Holdovers)

Best Supporting Actor

• Robert De Niro (Killers of the Flower Moon)

• Robert Downey Jr (Oppenheimer)

• Jacob Elordi (Saltburn)

• Ryan Gosling (Barbie)

• Paul Mescal (All of Us Strangers)

• Dominic Sessa (The Holdovers)


Best Original Score

• Killers of the Flower Moon

• Oppenheimer

• Poor Things

• Saltburn

• Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

Best Casting

• All of Us Strangers

• Anatomy of a Fall

• The Holdovers

• How to Have Sex

• Killers of the Flower Moon

Best Cinematography

• Killers of the Flower Moon

• Maestro

• Oppenheimer

• Poor Things

• The Zone of Interest

Best Editing

• Anatomy of a Fall

• Killers of the Flower Moon

• Oppenheimer

• Poor Things

• The Zone of Interest

Best Production Design

• Barbie

• Killers of the Flower Moon

• Oppenheimer

• Poor Things

• The Zone of Interest

Best Costume Design

• Barbie

• Killers of the Flower Moon

• Napoleon

• Oppenheimer

• Poor Things

Best Makeup and Hair

• Killers of the Flower Moon

• Maestro

• Napoleon

• Oppenheimer

• Poor Things

Best Sound

• Ferrari

• Maestro

• Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One

• Oppenheimer

• The Zone of Interest

Best Special Visual Effects

• The Creator

• Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3

• Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One

• Napoleon

• Poor Things


Best British Short Animation

• Crab Day

• Visible Mending

• Wild Summon

Best British Short Film

• Festival of Slaps

• Gorka

• Jellyfish and Lobster

• Such a Lovely Day

• Yellow

EE Rising Star Award

• Phoebe Dynevor

• Ayo Edebiri

• Jacob Elordi

• Mia McKenna-Bruce

• Sophie Wilde