Baftas 2025: Brady Corbet wins ‘Best Director’
Brady Corbet has won the Bafta for ‘Best Director’ for the sweeping historical drama The Brutalist.
The three-and-a-half-hour drama follows fictional Hungarian architect and Holocaust survivor László Tóth as he immigrates to the US and chases the American Dream.
The film covers topics including grief, artistic integrity, and trauma as Tóth navigates a volatile patron (Guy Pearce), addiction, and his relationship with his wife (Felicity Jones), from whom he was separated during the war and believed to have been killed.
In his acceptance speech, the director said, “I’m humbled and very grateful to be in a category not just with my fellow nominees and this particular ceremony but to all the filmmakers this year, Ali [Abbasi] and James [Mangold] and you know… best director… there’s no such thing. It’s like a joke. But I’m very grateful for all the same. To my cast, my crew, my family. Thank you for dealing with me for the last seven or eight years. That’s all.”
At just 36, Corbet has only made three features, including 2015’s The Childhood of a Leader and 2018’s Vox Lux. Before that, he was a child and teenage actor, appearing in films from European auteurs such as Michael Haneke, Lars von Trier, and Olivier Assayas.
It took seven years to complete The Brutalist, and Corbet did it with a minuscule budget of $9.6 million, well below that of other nominees such as Emilia Pérez and Conclave.
The film is a frontrunner at this year’s Oscars, having earned a total of ten nominations, including for ‘Best Picture’ and ‘Best Director.’
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