The Warrior wins top British awards

<div class="section1"><div class="Normal">LONDON: London-born-and-bred Gujarati Asif Kapadia’s first film, Hindi-language <span style="" font-style:="" italic="">The Warrior</span>, has been anointed the year’s best British offering at a glamorous BAFTA ceremony attended by most of Hollywood’s biggest names, including Nicole Kidman, Renee Zellwegger and Martin Scorsese.<br /><br />"Thank you for being so famous and for letting us in," joked 27-year-old Kapadia as he accepted the ultimate accolade from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts for his stark feature film shot in Rajasthan and starring India’s very own TV actor Irfan Khan.<br /><br />But <span style="" font-style:="" italic="">Devdas</span>, billed to its gasping audience as the most expensive and probably most opulent Hindi film ever, failed to win the ‘Best foreign film’ award.<br /><br />On Monday, the morning after BAFTA paid singular tribute to celebrated Polish director Roman Polanski’s dark, Holocaust-inspired <span style="" font-style:="" italic="">The Pianist</span>, a cock-a-hoop British film industry was congratulating itself on the Oscar-like star quality and increasingly high-profile, high-wattage of the British awards.<br /><br />But commentators said Kapadia’s very triumph, which extended to one other BAFTA award in the ‘best first film’ category and a cash prize of 10,000 pounds, underlined the crucial difference between Hollywood’s biggest prize and its British equivalent.<br /><br />Just months ago, the Oscars committee had rejected Kapadia’s film as one of the official "British" entries, arguing it used a non-British language, Hindi, and was shot on foreign shores.<br /><br />But the BAFTAs are more inclusive, boasted an official.<br /><br />Sunday night''s ceremony, held in Leicester Square in the heart of London, saw a poised, statuesque, ivory-gowned Nicole Kidman pick up the trademark golden mask ‘Best Actress’ award for her performance as Virginia Woolf in <span style="" font-style:="" italic="">The Hours</span>.<br /><br />A shaven-headed and clearly emotional Daniel Day-Lewis won ‘Best Actor’ for playing the patriotic, Irish-hating butcher in <span style="" font-style:="" italic="">Gangs of New York</span>.<br /><br />Heavily pregnant and puffy-faced Catherine Zeta-Jones won ‘Best supporting actress’ for <span style="" font-style:="" italic="">Chicago</span>, while husband Michael Douglas watched moist-eyed from the front row.<br /><br />The BAFTAs, started by legendary director Sir Alexander Korda 54 years ago as a small, members-only club, are now strategically positioned just weeks before the Oscars.<br /><br />Increasingly seen as previews of the Oscars, Hollywood’s finest routinely brave the British weather in their strapless, backless designer creations.<br /><br />Sir Michael Caine, with his Indian wife Shakira on his arm, recalled the BAFTAs’ early years with just 12 people in attendance.<br /><br />Now, said a BAFTA official, they are watched live on television by an estimated one billion people.</div> </div>