The BAFTA nominations are in and ‘Thank Goodness’ Wicked: For Good has actually been recognised, as has the BDSM rom-com, Pillion.

The nominations for 2026 were announced on Tuesday (27 January) ahead of the ceremony due to take place at London’s Royal Festival Hall on Sunday 22 February.

Much like the Oscars, Sinners is one of the most recognised films this year with 13 nominations. That’s beaten only by One Battle After Another which has 14.

Wicked: For Good managed to secure two nominations at the BAFTAs – one for Costume Design and another for Make-up and Hair. There was an outcry last week when the Oscar nominations were announced and the sequel to 2024’s Wicked failed to pick up a single nod.

Though, we’re still sad that neither Cynthia Erivo nor Ariana Grande, who were up for the Leading Actress and Supporting Actress categories last year were recognised for their work in the sequel.

Some experts have wondered if the reason why Wicked: For Good has failed to make much traction during this awards season is partly due to a historic lack of recognition for sequels, as well as the source musical’s second act never having really lived up to the first.

Meanwhile, it’s good news too for Pillion, the gay BDSM rom-com starring Alexander Skarsgård and Harry Melling. The film, which follows the love story between the dom biker, Ray (Skarsgård) and his sub, Colin (Melling) has been recognised in the Outstanding British Film, Outstanding debut by a British writer, director or producer, and Adapted Screenplay categories.

If won, the last two would go to the out-gay director, Harry Lighton, who made his feature debut with the film based on the novel Box Hill by Adam Mars-Jones. Lighton is also named in the Outstanding British Film category alongside Emma Norton, Lee Groombridge, Ed Guiney, and Andrew Lowe.

Also recognised for Sound is Warfare, which starred Heartstopper‘s Kit Connor among others. And Ethan Hawke is also up for Leading Actor for his turn as lyricist Lorenz Hart in Blue Moon. Hart is reported to have been gay despite proposing to women.

Queer filmmaker Adrian Molina and Pixar’s Elio is nominated for Animated Film. Following the film’s release, it came out that the titular character was explicitly “queer-coded” but that got “sanded down”.

The nominations might just be enough to allay the frustration of those accusing the Academy Awards of being “Oscars so straight”.

The 2026 BAFTA nominees in full are:

Best film

• Hamnet
• Marty Supreme
• One Battle After Another
• Sentimental Value
• Sinners

Outstanding British film

• 28 Years Later
• The Ballad of Wallis Island
• Bridget Jones: Mad about the Boy
• Die My Love
• H Is For Hawk
• Hamnet
• I Swear
• Mr Burton
• Pillion
• Steve

Leading actress

• Jessie Buckley – Hamnet
• Rose Byrne – If I Had Legs I’d Kick You
• Kate Hudson – Song Sung Blue
• Chase Infiniti – One Battle After Another
• Renate Reinsve – Sentimental Value
• Emma Stone – Bugonia

Leading actor

• Robert Aramayo – I Swear
• Timothée Chalamet – Marty Supreme
• Leonardo DiCaprio – One Battle After Another
• Ethan Hawke – Blue Moon
• Michael B Jordan – Sinners
• Jesse Plemons – Bugonia

Supporting actress

• Odessa A’zion – Marty Supreme
• Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas – Sentimental Value
• Wunmi Mosaku – Sinners
• Carey Mulligan – The Ballad of Wallis Island
• Teyana Taylor – One Battle After Another
• Emily Watson – Hamnet

Supporting actor

• Benicio del Toro – One Battle After Another
• Jacob Elordi – Frankenstein
• Paul Mescal – Hamnet
• Peter Mullan – I Swear
• Sean Penn – One Battle After Another
• Stellan Skarsgård – Sentimental Value

Director

• Bugonia – Yorgos Lanthimos
• Hamnet – Chloé Zhao
• Marty Supreme – Josh Safdie
• One Battle After Another – Paul Thomas Anderson
• Sentimental Value – Joachim Trier
• Sinners – Ryan Coogler

Outstanding debut by a British writer, director or producer

• The Ceremony
• My Father’s Shadow
• Pillion
• A Want In Her
• Wasteman

Film not in the English language

• It Was Just An Accident 
• The Secret Agent
• Sentimental Value 
• Sirât
• The Voice of Hind Rajab 

Documentary

• 2000 Meters to Andriivka
• Apocalypse in the Tropics
• Cover-Up
• Mr Nobody Against Putin
• The Perfect Neighbor

Animated film

• Elio
• Little Amélie
• Zootropolis 2

Children’s and family film

• Arco
• Boong
• Lilo & Stitch
• Zootropolis 2 

Original screenplay

• I Swear
• Marty Supreme
• The Secret Agent
• Sentimental Value
• Sinners

Adapted screenplay

• The Ballad of Wallis Island
• Bugonia
• Hamnet
• One Battle After Another
• Pillion

EE Bafta rising star award

• Robert Aramayo
• Miles Caton
• Chase Infiniti
• Archie Madekwe
• Posy Sterling

Original score

• Bugonia – Jerskin Fendrix
• Frankenstein – Alexandre Desplat
• Hamnet – Max Richter
• One Battle After Another – Jonny Greenwood
• Sinners – Ludwig Göransson

Casting

• I Swear
• Marty Supreme
• One Battle After Another 
• Sentimental Value
• Sinners 

Cinematography

• Frankenstein
• Marty Supreme
• One Battle After Another 
• Sinners 
• Train Dreams 

Costume design

• Frankenstein
• Hamnet 
• Marty Supreme 
• Sinners
• Wicked: For Good 

Editing

• F1 
• A House of Dynamite 
• Marty Supreme 
• One Battle After Another 
• Sinners 

Production design

• Frankenstein
• Hamnet
• Marty Supreme
• One Battle After Another
• Sinners

Make-up and hair

• Frankenstein
• Hamnet
• Marty Supreme
• Sinners
• Wicked: For Good

Sound

• F1
• Frankenstein
• One Battle After Another
• Sinners
• Warfare

Special visual effects

• Avatar: Fire and Ash
• F1 
• Frankenstein
• How to Train Your Dragon
• The Lost Bus

British short film

• Magid / Zafar 
• Nostalgie
• Terence
• This Is Endometriosis 
• Welcome Home Freckles 

British short animation

• Cardboard
• Solstice
• Two Black Boys in Paradise

Share your thoughts! Let us know in the comments below, and remember to keep the conversation respectful.

The post BAFTAs 2026 nominations in full as Pillion and Wicked: For Good get nods appeared first on PinkNews | Latest lesbian, gay, bi and trans news | LGBTQ+ news.

Lindsay Church never saw themself as a politician, but – amid their identity being bureaucratically erased, masked ICE agents stalking their neighbourhood and the incumbent Democrat representative locking out all other party members from running this November – stranger things have happened.

A veteran, non-profit leader, parent and non-binary person, Church and their wife – who was six months pregnant at the time – fled Richmond, Virginia in 2023 amid ongoing anti-queer harassment and set up just outside Chicago in Illinois, some 800 miles away. 

It was a place they had a family connection to, where they no longer heard gun shots at night or felt like they could not use the bathroom for fear of being questioned about their gender. It became home, a safe space that allowed Church to “take some of that armour off” and just enjoy the simplicity of visiting local restaurants, walking around the neighbourhood and taking their child to the park. 

Increasingly, as the federal government cracks down on LGBTQ+ rights, immigrants and US citizens alike are violently detained – and shot – and the voices of local voters are effectively silenced by those in power, the newfound safety Church and their family found in Illinois is under threat. 

They are not planning on standing by, though. 

They have launched a campaign for federal office in the state’s 4th congressional district, forthright in their belief that “safety has never been so important, as it has been in the last few years”, not just for themselves, but their neighbours and all Americans. 

“I love the people that live around the community that I get to call home because I have spent a lot of my life as a military family, never knowing where home was,” Church told PinkNews in an exclusive interview. 

“We bought this home 16 days before my baby was born. We had 16 days to get everything together and being able to bring them home and know that this was a community that would love them, support them, and that they could grow in, meant everything to me. 

“Forever I’m going to fight for this district, because this district brought me home.” 

Covering parts of Chicago’s Southwest side, Cook County and DuPage County, Illinois’s 4th congressional district is staunchly blue and has not elected a Republican since 1986. An area with a predominantly working class, Hispanic population, it has elevated poverty levels where around 12.8 per cent of people live below the poverty line – this rises to 18 per cent for children under the age of 18. 

The area was long notable for its downright bizarre design as one of the most gerrymandered congressional districts in the country, with gerrymandering being the term used to describe the manipulation of electoral boundaries to advantage a party. So odd was its shape that it inspired the Ugly Gerry font type, a front created in protest against gerrymandering by using different, unusually shaped US congressional districts as the characters for each letter. The 4th, given its shape, represented the letter ‘U’.  

The district has been represented by Jesús “Chuy” García since 2018, who has easily kept a Democrat stronghold in the area and commanded a huge majority victory in each subsequent election. 

In November, however, García was widely lambasted for announcing his retirement after the filing deadline had closed for the 2026 mid-term elections. It was a ploy that set up his chief of staff – who filed her own application just before the deadline – to be elected as his successor without competition, because it kept all other Democrats out of the race. 

The Democrat voting population were, therefore, left with only that choice and that choice alone – hardly democratic. 

That did not sit right with Church.    

“Our community and our country deserves real choice. In the district that we live in, we are so heavily Democratic that the Democratic nominee genuinely goes on to win the election, which means that this decision was made for us without us casting a single ballot,” they explained. 

“I’m a person that believes that democracy is worth fighting for and that it requires talking to your neighbours, your communities, the cities, everyone, in order to gain the support necessary to run.” 

They continued: “Like I said, I did not imagine myself to be a politician or somebody that would run for office, but if not us, then who? And if not now, when?” 

Church is no stranger to having their voice silenced. 

They are a veteran who served under ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’, a non-binary person whose identity was legislated out of existence last year by a stroke of Trump’s signature on an executive order, and in recent months they have watched as their friends who are still serving are purged from the military under the Trump administration’s re-instated trans ban. 

Church was part of the original push to overturn ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ and watching the ban return – which has been estimated to impact around 15,000 service people – has put their heart “at a place [they] can’t explain”. 

“We don’t have representation on the floor. There’s no trans service member that has made it through to the floor of Congress. We have been fighting from outside the doors and it’s so important for us to be there, to be talking about these issues, to be representing ourselves and to see ourselves in this tapestry of America,” they explained. 

“Our administration has made it so dangerous to be just a person in general,” Church continued, going on to admit that they do feel scared of what will happen to them for speaking out. 

“What will the administration try to do to me? What will the media turn me into?” they questioned. 

“All of it is connected to this bigger attempt to scare us into compliance and to make us so small that we don’t try to make history, that we don’t try to fight these fights.” 

“This is existential for me,” Church said. “I’ve watched my existence and my communities, my friends, trans youth, literally lose every bit of their rights while we also don’t have the representation we need to fight back.” 

Currently, Delaware representative Sarah McBride – who was sworn-in as the first ever out trans member of Congress in January – is the only political representation trans people have in the Legislative branch of US government. 

Since her election, McBride has been subject to threats to her life and vile transphobic abuse by other elected-representatives, with South Carolina Republican and anti-trans MAGA stalwart Nancy Mace tabling a trans bathroom ban for the whole of the US Capitol just to keep McBride from using the female toilets. 

That is just for being an out and visible trans person in politics, an elected representative who beyond fighting for trans rights is there to advocate for her constituents on kitchen table issues that impact everyone in her state and beyond: the inflation, job stability, living standards, quality education, healthcare access and so much more. 

People like McBride, Church said, are a “crack in the ceiling” and an “opportunity for us to see that we might be able to have a future here”.  

“It can’t be one person that’s out here trying to fight back against all of this because this is an onslaught that not one person can handle or what not one person can be the fighter for.”

For Church, and all others who have found themselves the fervent target of the Trump administration’s anti-trans rhetoric, winning looks different: it is about showcasing LGBTQ+ people cannot be erased and their voices cannot be silenced. 

“At this moment in time when they’re trying to tell us that people like me don’t exist and that we can’t exist, standing up and saying: ‘I don’t care what you do, I don’t care what you say, we’re not going to be erased, we’re not going to go away’. 

“This is our country and we deserve to be a part of it.” 

The post Non-binary veteran Lindsay Church is fighting for democracy in Illinois: ‘If not us, then who?’ appeared first on PinkNews | Latest lesbian, gay, bi and trans news | LGBTQ+ news.

The reviews are in and people have some mixed feelings about Charli XCX‘s, The Moment which has premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.

The mockumentary follows a version of the brat creator as she prepares to embark upon a world tour in connection with the 2024 hit album.

As well as Charli, the film stars Rosanna Arquette, Jamie Demetriou, Hailey Benton Gates, Isaac Powell, Rachel Sennott, Rish Shah, and Alexander Skarsgård.

Aidan Zamiri, who directed Charli’s music videos for “360” and “Guess”, returns as director in the film slated for release in UK cinemas on 20 February.

Since the weekend, reviews have been pouring in for the film, which currently has a 54% approval rating on review aggregator, Rotten Tomatoes.

The Hollywood Reporter praised Charli, who also stars in 100 Nights of Hero, as a “natural, engaging actor”. But it also skewers the film for coming across as confused as to what its message is – “a biting farce about the vacuities of celebrity industry? Or is it an earnest reflection on what it was to live at the center of this good-natured but still highly pressurized mania?”

Similarly, Deadline celebrated Charli’s “heightened, dynamic performance” and called the film “a spiritual sequel to Spice World“. Giving The Moment three stars, The Guardian called it a “defanged satire” and “less Spinal Tap and more Black Swan“.

Variety offered praise for Zamiri, who makes his feature debut with The Moment, but said the film “should have pushed further into crackpot satirical extreme”. Vulture has described the fictionalised version of Charli on screen as being “not a cinematically interesting version”. It later wonders whether anyone has “thought the film through”.

Offering the film 7/10 on Rotten Tomatoes, Collider said the “365” singer is “wonderful” in the film, “especially in the more frantic, anxiety-inducing moments.” Of the film’s problems, the outlet wrote: “Everything feels fine and fun, but often scattered and not willing to go too far with its concept.”

And The Daily Beast has described the film as a “flop”, picking at the “problematic” screenplay as well as “one-note” characters like Skarsgård’s Johannes, a director who disagrees with Charli’s brat vision.

The Moment is out in UK cinemas on 20 February.

Share your thoughts! Let us know in the comments below, and remember to keep the conversation respectful.

The post Charli XCX film The Moment earns mixed reviews with critics not convinced appeared first on PinkNews | Latest lesbian, gay, bi and trans news | LGBTQ+ news.

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Queer Eye‘s Antoni Porowski is turning up the heat this January with a new campaign that sees him showing off his underwear.

The food and drink expert on the long-running reality TV show has helped underwear brand SAXX launch its latest campaign featuring an array of boxer briefs and briefs.

In a promo video the Queer Eye cast member discusses his daily and weekly routines whilst making a cup of coffee and making himself a healthy looking snack in nothing but his boxers. The Spoiler Alert star explains he wears different underwear “based on how I feel”.

“Sometimes it’s eating something too,” Porowski says. Reflecting on his busy schedule he says: “Anything that is home cooked for me, it can genuinely be burnt toast with good quality butter, I’ll genuinely be thrilled.” He then adds: “It sounds woo-woo but when there’s that intention and that love in it you taste it in the food.”

Porowski also touches on life after Queer Eye and going solo. “I’m trying to just be a little more mindful and intentional with the things I take on,” he says.

View this post on Instagram

“I’ll have what he’s cookin’,” wrote one fan in the comments. “Good lord that body and those sultry eyes!” wrote another. Many comments feature exclusively fire emojis signalling that the majority of people found the shoot turned up the heat significantly.

A statement from SAXX reads: “The campaign taps into the shared mission between SAXX and Antoni. Helping men feel like the best version of themselves — cool, confident, and completely comfortable in their own skin.”

As reported by Out, Porowski has also joined SAXX’s Gamechangers programme. It’s an initiative aimed at profiling and highlighting men from a range of jobs making an impact in their respective fields.

View this post on Instagram

The tenth and final season of Queer Eye debuted last week (21 January). The launch was slightly overshadowed, however, by the latest bit of drama in the cast when Karamo Brown, the culture expert, pulled out of interviews the day before the launch.

Brown said he did so protect his “mental health and peace” and cited being “mentally and emotionally abused for years” as the reasons. Reacting to the news last week, Porowski said he was “surprised”. He later alluded to the drama with a post captioned: “When life hands u lemons, u make some thyme and rosemary infused lemonade.”

When a fan commented on a post how the drama made the show seem “fake” the food expert replied: “A lot of us come from complicated families and still have jobs and positive things we’re passionate about. Authenticity is about being honest about the complexities of life and knowing two things can exist at the same time.”

The latest feud follows that highlighted by the departure of Bobby Berk, the previous interior design expert, in 2023 after the show’s eighth season. A 2024 Rolling Stone investigation identified further issues based on multiple reports from people involved with the show’s production. 

Porowski, France, and Van Ness allegedly reignited the feud when they critiqued Brown’s “lifestyle choices” on the set of Queer Eye season 10. This was reportedly overhead by Brown’s mother who told her son, as reported yesterday TMZ.

PinkNews has contacted representatives for Karamo Brown, Tan France, Jonathan Van Ness and Antoni Porowski for comment.

Queer Eye is streaming on Netflix.

Share your thoughts! Let us know in the comments below, and remember to keep the conversation respectful.

The post Queer Eye’s Antoni Porowski turns up the heat in new underwear campaign appeared first on PinkNews | Latest lesbian, gay, bi and trans news | LGBTQ+ news.