BAFTA Award for Best Original Screenplay Facts for Kids

Quick facts for kids BAFTA Award for Best Original Screenplay
The 2025 recipient: Ryan Coogler
Presented by	British Academy of Film and Television Arts
Location	United Kingdom
Currently held by	Ryan Coogler for Sinners (2025)

The BAFTA Award for Best Original Screenplay is a special prize given each year by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA). This award celebrates the best original story written for a movie. A screenwriter is the person who creates these amazing stories and writes them down for films.

BAFTA is a famous British group that gives out awards for great work in movies, TV shows, and even video games. They have been honoring talented people in film since 1983. This award is specifically for stories that are completely new and not based on a book or another existing work.

In the lists below, you will see the movies and writers who won. Their names and the movie titles are in bold with a gold background.

The Story of the Award
Celebrating the Winners
Screenwriters with Multiple Wins and Nominations
- Multiple Wins
- Multiple Nominations
Images for kids
See also

The Story of the Award

The BAFTA Award for Best Original Screenplay started in 1984. Before that, there was just one award for all screenplays. But then, BAFTA decided to create two separate awards. One was for stories that were completely new (Original Screenplay). The other was for stories based on books or plays (Adapted Screenplay).

A famous writer named Woody Allen has won this award more times than anyone else, with four wins!

Celebrating the Winners

indicates the winner

Winners from the 1980s

Year	Winning Film	Winning Screenwriter(s)
1983	The King of Comedy	Paul D. Zimmerman
1984	Broadway Danny Rose	Woody Allen
1985	The Purple Rose of Cairo	Woody Allen
1986	Hannah and Her Sisters	Woody Allen
1987	Wish You Were Here	David Leland
1988	A World Apart	Shawn Slovo
1989	When Harry Met Sally...	Nora Ephron

Winners from the 1990s

Year	Winning Film	Winning Screenwriter(s)
1990	Cinema Paradiso	Giuseppe Tornatore
1991	Truly, Madly, Deeply	Anthony Minghella
1992	Husbands and Wives	Woody Allen
1993	Groundhog Day	Harold Ramis and Danny Rubin
1994	Pulp Fiction	Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avary
1995	The Usual Suspects	Christopher McQuarrie
1996	Secrets & Lies	Mike Leigh
1997	Nil by Mouth	Gary Oldman
1998	The Truman Show	Andrew Niccol
1999	Being John Malkovich	Charlie Kaufman

Winners from the 2000s

Year	Winning Film	Winning Screenwriter(s)
2000	Almost Famous	Cameron Crowe
2001	Amélie	Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Guillaume Laurant
2002	Talk to Her	Pedro Almodóvar
2003	The Station Agent	Tom McCarthy
2004	Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind	Charlie Kaufman
2005	Crash	Paul Haggis and Bobby Moresco
2006	Little Miss Sunshine	Michael Arndt
2007	Juno	Diablo Cody
2008	In Bruges	Martin McDonagh
2009	The Hurt Locker	Mark Boal

Winners from the 2010s

Year	Winning Film	Winning Screenwriter(s)
2010	The King's Speech	David Seidler
2011	The Artist	Michel Hazanavicius
2012	Django Unchained	Quentin Tarantino
2013	American Hustle	Eric Warren Singer and David O. Russell
2014	The Grand Budapest Hotel	Wes Anderson and Hugo Guinness
2015	Spotlight	Tom McCarthy and Josh Singer
2016	Manchester by the Sea	Kenneth Lonergan
2017	Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri	Martin McDonagh
2018	The Favourite	Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara
2019	Parasite	Han Jin Won and Bong Joon-ho

Winners from the 2020s

Year	Winning Film	Winning Screenwriter(s)
2020	Promising Young Woman	Emerald Fennell
2021	Licorice Pizza	Paul Thomas Anderson
2022	The Banshees of Inisherin	Martin McDonagh
2023	Anatomy of a Fall	Justine Triet and Arthur Harari
2024	A Real Pain	Jesse Eisenberg
2025	Sinners	Ryan Coogler

Screenwriters with Multiple Wins and Nominations

Multiple Wins

Wins	Screenwriter
4	Woody Allen
3	Martin McDonagh
2	Charlie Kaufman
2	Tom McCarthy
2	Quentin Tarantino

Multiple Nominations

Nominations	Screenwriter
10	Woody Allen
6	Joel Coen and Ethan Coen
5	Quentin Tarantino
3	Paul Thomas Anderson
3	Wes Anderson
3	Alfonso Cuarón
3	Mike Leigh
3	David Leland
3	Martin McDonagh
2	Pedro Almodóvar
2	Guillermo Arriaga
2	Mark Boal
2	Damien Chazelle
2	Guillermo del Toro
2	Pete Docter
2	Nora Ephron
2	Bill Forsyth
2	Charlie Kaufman
2	Neil Jordan
2	John Logan
2	Kenneth Lonergan
2	Tom McCarthy
2	Adam McKay
2	Bob Peterson
2	Josh Singer
2	Aaron Sorkin
2	Steven Zaillian

Images for kids

Woody Allen won four times for Broadway Danny Rose (1984), The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), and Husbands and Wives (1992)
Nora Ephron won for When Harry Met Sally... (1989)
Harold Ramis won for Groundhog Day (1993)
Quentin Tarantino won twice for Pulp Fiction (1994) and Django Unchained (2013)
Christopher McQuarrie won for The Usual Suspects (1995)
Mike Leigh won for Secrets & Lies (1996)
Gary Oldman won for Nil by Mouth (1997)
Charlie Kaufman won twice for Being John Malkovich (1999) and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
Cameron Crowe won for Almost Famous (2000)
Pedro Almodóvar won for Talk to Her (2002)
Tom McCarthy won twice for The Station Agent (2003) and Spotlight (2015)
Wes Anderson won for The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)
Diablo Cody won for Juno (2007)
Martin McDonagh won thrice for In Bruges (2008), Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017), and The Banshees of Inisherin (2022)
Michel Hazanavicius won for The Artist (2011)
David O. Russell won for American Hustle (2013)
Kenneth Lonergan won for Manchester by the Sea (2016)
Bong Joon-ho won for Parasite (2019)
Emerald Fennell won for Promising Young Woman (2020)
Paul Thomas Anderson won for Licorice Pizza (2021)
Justine Triet won for Anatomy of a Fall (2023)
Jesse Eisenberg won for A Real Pain (2024)