When the envelope opens, will they say “Jewish?”

The BAFTA Film Awards are on Sunday. The Oscars on 15th March. Not everyone has been marking the days on their kitchen calendar.

Certainly not Steven Spielberg, nominated as a producer of best film nominee Hamnet. Only a week ago he became an EGOT (Emmy/Grammy/Oscar/Tony) winner for his documentary about his longtime collaborator, composer John Williams. 

Joining Marvin Hamlisch and Mel Brooks as the third Jewish EGOT, suggests that the director of Schindler’s List won’t be losing sleep over shelf space. There are others however who will be dreaming of filling that gap on the mantelpiece.

For those who are nominated in the factual category, awards mean a lot. The subjects of documentaries can change lives, but as that is rarely reflected in the remuneration, a big trophy is compensation . After years of work, risk and minimal funding it’s only fair as a BAFTA, and especially an Oscar, can often  change the future of the people who made the film.

That could be the case for the team behind Mr Nobody Against Putin. The documentary follows Pavel Talankin, a young Russian schoolteacher who continued filming inside his classroom as a state-imposed anti-Ukraine syllabus was introduced. His material, gathered at huge personal risk, was shaped into a feature by Jewish director David Borenstein with producers Helle Faber, Radovan Síbrt, and Alžběta Karásková under the leadership of Lucie Kon, commissioning editor for Storyville. Would a BAFTA win next week strengthen the chances of this courageous film in Hollywood? Absolutely — and add a tick for the tribe!

Scanning for Jewish names on nominee lists is what we do each January — and in the past two years, four months and eight days it’s been the most positive story filled with names. And what a list it has proven to be with  Kate Hudson (Best Actress for Song Sung Blue), producer Dede Gardner for F1 and songwriter Diane Warren for Original Song all nominated on both sides of the Atlantic.

Sometimes scouring unearths a real find and that was Sean Penn, a supporting actor contender for One Battle After Another who had a Jewish dad called Leo. At a time when public narratives about Jews and Israel are so fraught and so many close their awards acceptance speeches with the words “As a Jew” grappling for the positive is essential – so gezund heit, Sean!

But sometimes you don’t have to grapple or dig. In Marty Supreme, Jewish identity is explicit and with a haul of 20 Oscar and BAFTA nominations combined we have a reason to toast director Josh Safdie.

Co-written and produced by Ronald Bronstein (also nominated), Best Actor nominee Timothée Chalamet plays Marty Mauser, who is loosely inspired by Jewish table-tennis legend Marty Reisman. Now Marty may not have the Cambridge pedigree of Olympic sprinter Harold Abrahams in Chariots of Fire — but Ben Cross didn’t wear a Star of David and, as Marty, sweaty Chalamet does.

BAFTA-nominated Odessa A’zion, the daughter of Better Things star Pamela Adlon, plays girlfriend Rachel, and the Grace Kelly of Jewesses, Gwyneth Paltrow, is Marty’s older woman Kay Stone. And the tribe keeps coming with Rebecca, Marty’s mother played by Fran Drescher, and her friend Judy by Sandra Bernhard. Stay for the credits just for the sport of spotting names beside a range of parts and the production credits.

One of the more historically grounded characters in the film is older table-tennis player Bela Kletzki (Géza Röhrig), an Auschwitz survivor and ping pong champion representing Hungary. Based on real-life player István Kelen, who rebuilt his life through the sport, there is a scene in which he recounts how he survived the camps. Safdie clearly has his own ideas for much of the story, but with this he takes a liberty with the truth, but for the right reason.

That such a scene feels like a gesture of acknowledgement to Jewish audiences says something about the present climate. The industrialised murder of six million has been diminished since October 7 – the horror reduced  by those who equate it with other diabolical acts. Surely even Spielberg must wonder how his Schindler would be received now? If he does he hasn’t told anyone who might be influenced by those words and there are many young Jewish filmmakers who could do with the help.

That hideous things have happened in the Israel Gaza war no one could deny, but will the real genocide we commemorate on Yom Hashoah now be treated as just another story for the screen that is unlikely to induce sympathy? Or be green-lit.

That’s why Marty Supreme matters. Seeing one of the most unapologetically Jewish ensemble films  be recognised here and in Hollywood will resonate next Sunday and on 15 March. But we will be holding our collective breath. Having seen the word ‘Jewish’ discarded in news reports on the Battle of Cable Street and Holocaust Memorial Day, will Marty still be the ‘Jewish’ ping pong player on award night?

Of course we will root for all the Jewish nominees and hope for wins, but brace ourselves for the speeches. And if Safdie does take home a BAFTA — and perhaps an Oscar — one hopes he can simply accept it plainly. As a Jew who deserves it.