Nominations announced for the British Independent Film Awards 2026
BFI backed films pick up 39 nominations including eight for Clio Barnard’s I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning and seven for Ashley Walters’ Animol.
The nominations for the 2026 British Independent Film Awards have been announced, with BFI-backed I See Buildings Fall like Lightning, Clio Barnard’s portrait of five lifelong friends confronting adulthood as they turn 30, securing eight nominations including Best British Independent Film, Best Director and Best Ensemble Performance. Animol, Ashley Walters’ hard-edged first feature set inside a young offenders’ institution, received seven nominations including The Douglas Hickox Award for Best Debut Director. Both films are backed by the BFI Filmmaking Fund, awarding National Lottery Good Cause funding.
Leading the field with 12 nominations is Elsinore, Simon Stone’s drama about actor Ian Charleson’s final performance as Hamlet while dying from AIDS. Among its haul are Best British Independent Film, Best Director, Best Screenplay and acting nominations for Andrew Scott and Billie Piper.
The Best British Independent Film race is completed by Effi o Blaenau, a Welsh-language coming-of-age drama about a hard-partying young woman whose life begins to unravel; Queen at Sea, Lance Hammer’s dementia drama starring Juliette Binoche and Tom Courtenay; and Tender Loving Care, billed as Mike Leigh’s swansong.
Elsewhere, Andrew Haigh earned a Best Director nomination for the snowbound Colm Tóibín adaptation A Long Winter, while Mark Jenkin’s ghostly fishing-trawler tale Rose of Nevada (funded and distributed by the BFI) and Danny Boyle’s tabloid origin story Ink both featured strongly in the craft categories.
In the performance categories, Best Lead nominees include Andrew Scott, Juliette Binoche, Erin Doherty, Leisa Gwenllian, Jonathan Jules and Tut Nyuot, while Claire Foy, Bill Pullman, Billie Piper and Tom Courtenay are among those recognised in supporting roles.
Films supported by the BFI picked up a total of 39 nominations, with other nominated films backed by the BFI with National Lottery Good Cause funding including All Rivers Spill Their Stories to the Sea, Extra Geography, The Incomer, Something Familiar, Super Nature, Surviving Earth and We, The Hated. Meanwhile, international co-productions supported by the BFI’s UK Global Screen Fund include The Education of Jane Cumming and Everybody Digs Bill Evans. Florid, whose director Billy Lumby is nominated for the Douglas Hickox Award for Best Debut Director, was also supported through development by the BFI.
The nominations were unveiled at One Hundred Shoreditch by previous BIFA winners Jay Lycurgo and Posy Sterling. Winners will be announced at a ceremony at the Roundhouse on 6 December, with the craft awards revealed in advance on 24 November.