Disney's Soul amongst diverse list of Bafta nominations

The Bafta film awards have unveiled a long list of diverse nominations, with Disney Pixar's Soul in the running for Best Animation.

The film is the first Pixar production to feature an African-American lead character, Joe Gardner, a music teacher and jazz pianist whose soul gets separated from his body after an open manhole accident.

At the 78th Golden Globe Awards last month it picked up Best Animated Feature Film and Best Original Score.

Soul was due to come out in cinemas in November, but instead was put straight onto the Disney+ streaming service.

It's up against Onward, another Disney Pixar release - along with adventure fantasy Wolfwalkers.

The winners will be announced at a ceremony on 11 April, which will be without a live audience because of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

Academy faced pressure

Actors Riz Ahmed and Daniel Kaluuya are among the nominees

BAFTA had been under a lot of pressure to have a more diverse list of nominees this year, particularly in its acting categories as there were no black or ethnic minorities represented at last year's ceremony.

It introduced more than 120 changes to its voting process and increased all its acting and director categories to six nominees in an attempt to increase diversity.

As a result, 16 of the 24 acting nominees this year come from ethnic minority groups.

British actor and writer Daniel Kaluuya is among them, so too is Riz Ahmed, as well as 16-year-old Bukky Bakray, star of teen drama Rocks.

"After last year's nominations, we started the Bafta Review process with the intention of levelling the playing field and introduced a range of measures to ensure that all entered films were seen by our members and judged on merit," said Bafta chair Krishnendu Majumdar.

"We hope today you can see some of those changes reflected in the breadth and depth of those nominated and we congratulate all our nominees."