27/01/2003 - Chicago and Gangs of New York lead the field with 12 Bafta nominations each. The winners on 23 February in London

Chicago, the winner of the best comedy, actor and actress in a comedy Golden Globes and Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York (Golden Globe for best director and a candidate to win the Directors’ Guild of America Award) swept the boards with 12 Bafta nominations each.
Although to a large extent, this year’s Bafta nominations are a reflection of the Golden Globes, the list of potential winners does contain several European filmmakers in the 21 categories. The five nominees for the Alexander Korda award for best British film of 2002 are:
Bend it Like Beckham [+see also:
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film profile] by Gurinder Chadha, Dirty Pretty Things [+see also:
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film profile] by Stephen Frears, The Hours by Stephen Daldry, The Magdalene Sisters [+see also:
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film profile] by Peter Mullan, winner of the Golden Lion at the last Venice Film Festival and The Warrior [+see also:
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film profile], initially submitted and subsequently withdrawn as the British candidate in this year’s best foreign film Oscar category. Incidentally, the Hindi-language The Warrior was also nominated in the best foreign film category.
Stephen Daldry’s The Hours scored a total of nine nominations including the David Lean Award for the best achievement in direction for Daldry and a best screenplay (adaptation) for David Hare. Daldry will be competing against Polish-born Roman Polanski whose Palme d’Or-winning The Pianist [+see also:
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film profile] scored 7 nominations including best actor for Adrien Brody, best screenplay adaptation, predictably best musical score - the Anthony Asquith Award - for the late Wojciech Kilar and best cinematography for Pawel Edelman.
There are two Europeans in the best original screenplay category: Peter Mullan and his Magdalene Sisters and Pedro Almodovar for Hable con Ella [+see also:
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film profile] (Talk to Her), which was also nominated in the best foreign film category.
The best actor five includes Michael Caine for The Quiet American and Daniel Day Lewis for his stunning performance as Bill the Butcher in Scorsese’s Gangs of New York. The "Gangs" nominees also feature Italy’s Dante Ferretti in the production design category for having built the "world’s biggest film set" in Rome’s Cinecittà Studios, Britain’s Sandy Powell for her costumes and German cinematographer Michael Balhaus for translating Scorsese’s vision into celluloid.
The Baftas will be presented on Sunday, 23 February at the Odeon Leicester Square in London and will be hosted by Stephen Fry.