LONDON (AP) Oppenheimer won seven prizes, including best picture, director and actor , at the 77th British Academy Film Awards on Sunday, cementing its front-runner status for the Oscars next month.

Gothic fantasia Poor Things took five prizes and Holocaust drama The Zone of Interest won three.

Christopher Nolan won his first best director BAFTA for Oppenheimer, and Cillian Murphy won the best actor prize for playing physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb.

Murphy said he was grateful to play such a colossally knotty, complex character.

Emma Stone was named best actress for playing the wild and spirited Bella Baxter in Poor Things, a steampunk-style visual extravaganza that won prizes for visual effects, production design, costume design, and makeup and hair.

Oppenheimer had a field-leading 13 nominations, but missed out on the record of nine trophies, set in 1971 by Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

It won the best film race against Poor Things, Killers of the Flower Moon, Anatomy of a Fall and The Holdovers. Oppenheimer also won trophies for editing, cinematography and musical score, as well as the best supporting actor prize for Robert Downey Jr.