“Sentimental Value” partly helped launch the 2025 Oscar season in Cannes, although it wasn’t the big winner there. But now “Sentimental Value” can play a big role in ending the season, too. However, it isn’t favored to win major categories like Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, or Best Original Screenplay. However, its last chance to make a real impact before Oscar night is at BAFTA, where it can make a significant move in the two most competitive major categories left – Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress.
Because the SAG/Actor Awards snubbed “Sentimental Value” across the board for one puzzling reason or another, BAFTA is the last major precursor where supporting Oscar nominees Stellan Skarsgård and Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas are in the running. As such, if either of them has a chance to win the Oscar, they must win BAFTA, or they will each be eliminated from the win conversation.
Even winning a BAFTA might not be enough, since the only Oscar acting winners to win without a SAG/Actor nomination are Regina King for “If Beale Street Could Talk,” Christophe Waltz for “Django Unchained,” and Marcia Gay Harden for “Pollock.” They all had extenuating circumstances that Skarsgård and Lilleaas don’t have: King swept the season, except for missing both SAG and BAFTA nominations; Waltz was already an Oscar winner; and Harden was the most out-of-nowhere acting winner of this century.
Nonetheless, since Skarsgård already won the Golden Globe, Jacob Elordi won the Critics’ Choice, and Benicio del Toro has the most precursor wins of the season, Best Supporting Actor is still considered wide open enough for any one of them to win. If Skarsgård does win BAFTA, then at the very least, he will likely stay in the top two and face off against whoever wins SAG for the final showdown at the Oscars. But if Del Toro or Elordi win BAFTA instead, they will likely be favored to sweep their way through SAG and the Oscars from there – and even if they split BAFTA and SAG, then Skarsgård will surely be out of the running to beat them both for the Oscar.
As for Best Supporting Actress, Lilleaas is a greater long shot to win, since she didn’t win either the Golden Globe or Critics Choice. At the moment, thanks to Teyana Taylor winning the Golden Globe, “One Battle After Another” still being favored for Best Picture, and Critics’ Choice winner and precursor leader Amy Madigan being snubbed from BAFTA altogether, the path for Taylor sweeping the rest of the way seems rather clear. Should Taylor win at BAFTA, then a win at SAG would appear inevitable as well, and so would an Oscar win that would help complete “One Battle After Another’s” Best Picture win package.
However, if Skarsgård doesn’t win Best Supporting Actor at BAFTA, perhaps Lilleaas would become the best hope for “Sentimental Value” to get at least one collective win there. In that scenario, Lilleaas would still be alive to pull off a surprise at the Oscars even after missing SAG completely, though the odds for her wouldn’t be as strong as they would be for a veteran like Skarsgård. But even if a Lilleaas BAFTA win doesn’t necessarily make her a favorite to win the Oscar, it can still impact the race in another way.
Madigan missing BAFTA and being the sole Oscar nominee for “Weapons” has raised doubts that she actually has the best chance to beat Taylor for the Oscar. Yet since Lilleaas’s SAG snub cast significant doubt on her Oscar chances as well, it has helped raise Wunmi Mosaku up as a potential top-two candidate almost by default. But between “Sinners” record-setting 16 Oscar nominations and Mosaku actually being nominated at both BAFTA and SAG, it has created a potential path for her to take control of the race, too – albeit one that Lilleaas could block at BAFTA.
If Mosaku defeats Taylor at BAFTA, it will turn Best Supporting Actress into a two-woman race between them at both SAG and the Oscars, and perhaps serve as a proxy battle to help settle Best Picture between “One Battle After Another” and “Sinners” as well. But if Lilleaas gets in Mosaku’s way at BAFTA and upsets Taylor there, it greatly weakens Mosaku’s case to win SAG and reopens the door for Taylor to take control from then on after all. Then again, if Mosaku loses BAFTA to Lilleaas yet still pulls off an upset at SAG anyway, it would set up an Oscar night finale where the top four Best Supporting Actress contenders will have split all four of the major precursors – meaning anyone except Lilleaas’s co-star Elle Fanning could win then.
Nonetheless, that scenario doesn’t happen unless Lilleaas wins at BAFTA first, just like the biggest possible chaos in Best Supporting Actor won’t be possible without Skarsgård winning at BAFTA. If one or both of these “Sentimental Value” supporting nominees prevail at BAFTA, then one or both supporting categories will still be undecided going into Oscar night. But if neither of them wins, then in one way or another, both supporting categories will likely be much easier to predict before Oscar night, if not settled right there.
To be frank, any hope for actual suspense on Oscar night might fully depend on Skarsgård, Lilleaas, or both upending the supporting categories at BAFTA. In all six of the other major categories, those races are already settled or may be locked in over the next two weeks or so. Best Picture will be locked by “One Battle After Another” if it wins the PGA a week after its likely BAFTA Best Film win, Best Director was almost surely locked for Paul Thomas Anderson after he won the DGA, Best Actress will surely be cemented for Jessie Buckley after her likely BAFTA win, Best Actor could be completely settled for Timothee Chalamet barring a last-minute BAFTA surprise, and the Screenplay categories were guaranteed for “Sinners” and “One Battle After Another” a long time ago.
In that context, if Skarsgård and Lilleaas both lose at BAFTA and the BAFTA winners then go on to win SAG/The Actor too, then every single major Oscar category may well be a foregone conclusion going into Oscar night. Even in the most predictable seasons, at least one major race is usually still up in the air before the Oscars, if only one. But if BAFTA largely settles both Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress and then SAG/The Actor Awards, then we might very well have nothing to feel any suspense over on Oscar night at all.
For those who want to avoid a night like that, they might well need to hope and pray for Skarsgård to win at BAFTA, so that Best Supporting Actor remains somewhat of a question mark a while longer. Barring that, they may need to hope and pray that Lilleaas wins BAFTA too, so that the ultimate chaos in Best Supporting Actress remains a possibility. Yet if neither of them wins, and if the supporting BAFTA winners are all clear to repeat at SAG as well, then it might be game over in more ways than one before the Oscars.
“Sentimental Value” began the 2025 Oscars season as a projected Oscar favorite, even after falling short of the Cannes Palme d’Or. Since then, it has been relegated to a spoiler, albeit one that got every single Oscar nomination it hoped for on nomination morning, a feat no other film except “Sinners” achieved. Presumably, a film with such strength should still be in the running for at least one win, whether it’s in the supporting acting categories or for Best International Film.
However, BAFTA serves as the last best opportunity for “Sentimental Value” to be a real factor before Oscar night. If one or both of its supporting BAFTA nominees win, then it will do us all a favor by giving us at least one or two unsettled major races in the final month of the season. Considering how “Sentimental Value” made one of the first significant dents of this season, it would be fitting and perhaps a relief if it made one of the season’s last at BAFTA.
Who do you think will win Best Supporting Actor/Actress at BAFTA this weekend? How do you feel that will impact the respective Oscar races for Best Supporting Actor/Actress? Please let us know in the comments section below and on Next Best Picture’s X account, click here here for the most recent tally of awards season winners, here for Next Best Picture’s precursor tracker, and here for their current Oscar predictions.
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