WHILE the Bafta-nominations include some well-known names, eyebrows have been raised at the startling omission of home-grown upcoming talent.

Film critics expressed their dismay that Scottish writer/director Hope Dickson Leach’s debut film The Levelling was ignored by voters, despite receiving rave reviews.

Dickson Leach – wife of The Herald’s Arts Correspondent Phil Miller – was highly praised for the drama, which many included among the best films of 2017 and won the inaugural IWC Filmmaker Bursary Award.

The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw expressed his surprise that both the filmmaker and her film failed to make the nominations list, tweeting: “Also not invited to the [Batftas] was Hope Dickson Leach’s The Levelling which surely deserved a nomination in Outstanding British Debut.”

The BBC’s Mark Kermode said that the film would have won three awards if he had been on the judging panel, having previously predicted that Dickson Leach’s “moment had arrived”.

He tweeted: “My own nominations for Best Film, Best British Film and Outstanding Brit Debut would have included [Hope Dickson Leach’s] brilliant The Levelling – one of the finest films of 2017.”