The BBC cut the words “free Palestine” from a British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) winner’s acceptance speech, Variety reported on Monday.
Akinola Davies Jr., who won the BAFTA Film Award for outstanding debut by a British writer, director, or producer for his movie, My Father’s Shadow, originally said, “To the economic migrant, the conflict migrant, those under occupation, dictatorship, persecution, and those experiencing genocide, you matter, and your stories matter more than ever. Your dreams are an act of resistance. To those watching at home, archive your loved ones, archive your stories yesterday, today, and forever. For Nigeria, for London, Congo, Sudan, free Palestine. Thank you.”
The edited speech aired two hours after the ceremony.
But this part of his speech was missing from the broadcast on BBC One and iPlayer. Just the first section, in which he thanked his co-screenwriter and brother, Wale Davies, and his family, was shown.
My Father’s Shadow is about two brothers in Lagos in 1993 who return home for a family reunion and see how their estranged father struggles to get by, set against the backdrop of the 1993 Nigerian election.
The BBC edited the awards from the three-hour ceremony to a two-hour television broadcast, but many on social media were angry that Davies Jr. saying, “Free Palestine,” was cut while heckling from the audience, including one man shouting out an offensive racial epithet, was aired.
The big winner at the BAFTAs was the US film One Battle After Another, a story about a band of radical revolutionaries, which won six awards. Some were surprised that the film, The Voice of Hind Rajab, about the death of a Palestinian girl under IDF fire, did not win in the Best Foreign Language Film category. The voters chose a Norwegian film, Sentimental Value, about a family of filmmakers and actors, instead.
Over the past two years, the BBC has been heavily criticized for its coverage of the war in Gaza, notably its frequent acceptance of information about casualties from the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry, as well as for not disclosing that the protagonist of the documentary, Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone, which it aired in February 2025, was the son of a Hamas official.
The UK media regulatory agency, Ofcom, called the documentary and its handling “materially misleading” and said, “Breaches of the code that have resulted in the audience being materially misled have always been considered by Ofcom to be among the most serious that can be committed by a broadcaster, because they go to the heart of the relationship of trust between a broadcaster and its audience.”
Ofcom demanded that the BBC make a primetime statement acknowledging its mistake, which it did. The BBC Director General apologized for the “significant failing in relation to accuracy.”
Variety requested comments from both the BBC and Davies Jr. on the editing of the BAFTA broadcast, but neither responded immediately.