Moonlight didn’t win any Bafta Awards, the British equivalent of the Oscars.
The acclaimed black LGBTQ drama, which has eight Academy Award nominations, came away from London ceremony empty-handed despite being highly fancied to win one or more of the four categories in which it was nominated.
The fact that Moonlight lost to ‘lily-white’ movies La La Land and Manchester by the Sea added to the outrage.
Patrick Strudwick, LGBTQ Editor of BuzzFeed, led the charge against the ‘straight white people’ mindset of Bafta not rewarding his personal choice for Best Film, tweeting: “La La Land winning over Moonlight? It’s almost like most BAFTA judges are white straight people. With no taste. Or heart. Or class.”
Seventeen-year-old actor Noah Marullo (Last Chance Harvey) tweeted: “Damn Baftas so white… moonlight is a flawless film that deserves recognition.”
Social justice warriors were tweeting up a storm, accusing the Baftas of a “hate crime,” “invalidating their existence,” and rewarding a movie that was “a mass of white fluff in a world that does not need anymore white fluff.” One hater even said she was taking legal action.
Robbie Collin, movie critic of the Telegraph, tweeted, “Nothing for Moonlight = CRAZY.” One anonymous commenter of the chat room of the Gold Derby awards website, a popular haunt among LA-based movie insiders, wrote “Miffed by the complete shutout of “Moonlight” from all categories.”
It makes you think next year’s Bafta Awards will introduce stringent diversity criteria to ensure the right films get the right prizes.
Oh wait…they already have.
