2015 BAFTA Shorts Nominees announced

The British Academy of Film and Television Arts announced the nominees for the 2015 BAFTA Awards today and – alongside feature fare such as The Imitation Game, Ida and The Theory of Everything – a number of British shorts and animations will vie to come away from the ceremony with coveted BAFTA Mask.

The nominees for Best Live Action Short include Slap (Dir. Nick Rowland, UK) the powerful story of a young working-class boxer who tries to come to terms with his identity as a transvestite. With some strong performances and confident direction, the film – from the National Film and Television School – won the Best Short at the 2014 Edinburgh International Film Festival.

Speaking to Cineuropa Shorts, director Nick Rowland said:

"Although it’s an over-used saying, the only way I can describe getting a BAFTA nomination is that it's a dream come true. The nomination is really thanks to the amazing talent and hard work of the whole cast and crew. You never know how people are going to respond to your film during the intense period of making it, so it’s amazing to see it's connecting with people. My goal is to be directing feature films, and I hope this will help me reach that next stage in the future. That's the goal I am working towards."

Other nominees are Boogaloo And Graham (Dir. Michael Lennox, UK), about two young boys who are given two chicks to rear, Emotional Fusebox (Dir. Rachel Tunnard, UK), a powerful story starring British actress Jodie Whittaker as a woman who move into her mother’s shed after the death of her brother, The Kármán Line (Dir. Oscar Sharp, UK) a magical realist tale of a woman who inherits a condition that makes her rise into the air that stars Olivia Colman, and Three Brothers (Dir. Aleem Khan, UK), about Hamid and his struggle to care for his younger brothers when their father abandons them for Pakistan.

In the Best Animation section the nominees include Monkey Love Experiments (Dirs. Ainslie Henderson & Will Anderson, UK) an amazingly accomplished and moving animation about a test monkey and his relationship with another primate who is not what they seem. Henderson and Anderson have already won a BAFTA for their equally accomplished The Making of Longbird. The other nominees are NFTS Graduation film The Bigger Picture (Dir. Daisy Jacobs, UK), an account of the trials and tribulations of looking after an elderly patient which premiered at last year’s Cannes Film Festival in the Cinéfondation section, and My Dad (Dir. Marcus Armitage, UK) a hand-drawn animation about a boy’s memories of his father.

The EE British Academy Film Awards take place on Sunday 8 February at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London.