Reprinted from The Hollywood Reporter by Alex Ritman on January 12, 2021.
The first round of voting has opened for the 2021 BAFTA film awards, the first to take place following last year’s watershed review into diversity that saw more than 120 changes implemented by the British Academy, considered the biggest shakeup in its history.
Among the changes that BAFTA’s almost 7,000 voting members will already have noticed is a selection of 15 films each member is being asked to watch, randomly selected from across the categories and mixing up the biggest titles and less well known films.
This new initiative is all part of what BAFTA chair Krishnendu Majumdar says is aimed at helping “level the playing field, to get more people to watch more stuff, more films and judge them” and to counteract previous concerns that smaller titles were simply being ignored. …
