Four British stars, who failed to be recognised by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, have been shortlist for the most prestigious award in the cinema calendar, the Oscars, as the most unconventional of Awards seasons takes another unpredictable turn.

Gary Oldman and Olivia Colman – previous Oscar winners for Darkest Hour and The Favourite respectively – will this time be in the running for Best Actor for Mank and Best Supporting Actress for The Father, despite being snubbed by BAFTA, even though the British Academy opened up its shortlists to six names.

Carey Mulligan – overlooked by BAFTA for her lead role in Promising Young Woman – has picked up an Oscar nomination for lead actress, while Sacha Baron Cohen – who picked up Golden Globes for his Borat follow-up film – is in the running for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role in The Trial of the Chicago 7. He has also secured a screenplay nomination for Borat Subsequent Moviefilm.

Despite nominating some of the British stars omitted by BAFTA, the American Academy managed to produce a diverse list of nominations, with 9 of the 20 acting nominees coming from minority ethnic backgrounds – including Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom‘s Chadwick Boseman and Viola Davis, the two stars of Judas and the Black Messiah, Daniel Kaluuya and Lakeith Stanfield, who are up against each other in the Best Supporting Actor category.

The Academy has also managed to avoid criticism on the other talking point with regards to diversity, with two of the five nominees for Best Director being women; the British actress Emerald Fennell is in the running for her debut feature, Promising Young Woman, alongside Nomadland’s Chloé Zhao, while David Fincher secures his third Oscar nomination for Mank . Two foreign language directors complete the shortlist, with Another Round’s Thomas Vinterberg and Minari’s Lee Isaac Chung also in the running.

The pandemic has pushed such smaller films – including foreign language productions – into contention in a way that they might not have been in a regular year, but Netflix, which has continued to perform better and better in successive years, once again has the most nominated film. Mank – the biopic of the writer of the Orson Welles classic Citizen Kane – tops the list with 10 nominations, some way ahead of a slew of films with 6; The Father, Judas and the Black Messiah, Minari, Sound of Metal, The Trial of the Chicago 7 and Nomadland.

Nominations are, of course, no guarantee of success; Mank was the most nominated film at the Golden Globes but ended the night with nothing. With the Oscars favouring films about films, Mank could have a better night this time around.

As with any list of awards nominations, there will be perceived snubs, with no nomination for One Night In Miami’s director Regina King, and no nominations at all for The Mauritanian, which secured a Golden Globe for Jodie Foster and a BAFTA nod for Tahar Rahim.

Delayed as a result of the pandemic, like every other film awards ceremony of the year the Oscars will be handed out at a ceremony on 25th April, held both in the traditional Dolby Theater in Hollywood and LA’s Union Station.

Here is the full list of nominees: