Baftas 2014: the winners in pictures

Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave had been tipped as the night’s major winner and also won best actor for Chiwetel Ejiofor as a man tricked and sold into slavery in the pre-civil war United States.

But Gravity, starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney, took home six prizes from its 11 nominations, including the best director prize for Mexican Alfonso Cuaron and the awards for cinematography and outstanding British film.

LIST OF MAIN WINNERS:

BEST FILM: 12 Years a Slave
OUTSTANDING BRITISH FILM: Gravity
BEST DIRECTOR: Alfonso Cuaron for Gravity
LEADING ACTOR: Chiwetel Ejiofor in 12 Years a Slave
LEADING ACTRESS: Cate Blanchett in &;Blue Jasmine
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Barkhad Abdi in Captain Phillips
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Jennifer Lawrence in American Hustle
DOCUMENTARY: The Act of Killing
ANIMATED FILM: Frozen
ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: Eric Warren Singer and David O. Russell for American Hustle
ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: Steve Coogan and Jeff Pope for Philomena
FILM NOT IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE: The Great Beauty
ORIGINAL MUSIC: Gravity
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Gravity

McQueen, 44, said it was horrifying that 21 million people were still living in slavery around the world now.

“I hope that, 150 years from now, our ambivalence will not allow another filmmaker to make this film,” he told the ceremony at London’s Royal Opera House.

McQueen, a video artist as well as a director, previously won kudos for his 2008 film Hunger, about an IRA hunger strike in Northern Ireland, and won Britain’s top visual art award, the Turner Prize, in 1999 for a video based on a Buster Keaton film.

Pitt, whose partner Angelina Jolie accompanied him to the ceremony, said he was proud of the film, based on the real story of Solomon Northup.

“It is a story that says we are all the same, and our freedom and dignity is everything, and that is what we are fighting for”, Pitt said.

Bookmakers had expected 12 Years a Slave to be the big winner ahead of Gravity, American Hustle, the Somali pirate thriller Captain Phillips. and the British drama Philomena, starring Judi Dench as an Irish woman hunting for the son she had given up for adoption.

Vying for the best actor prize alongside Ejiofor were Christian Bale in American Hustle, Bruce Dern in Nebraska, DiCaprio in Martin Scorsese’s tale of American greed The Wolf of Wall Street, and Tom Hanks in Captain Phillips.

The best actress award went to Australian Cate Blanchett for playing a riches-to-rags socialite in Woody Allen’s tragicomedy Blue Jasmine.

She beat Dench, Amy Adams from American Hustle;, Emma Thompson in Saving Mr. Banks and Bullock in Gravity.

Blanchett, 44, dedicated her award to the actor Philip Seymour Hoffman, who died of an apparent drugs overdose two weeks ago.

The British Academy Film Awards (BAFTAs), which come two weeks before the Academy Awards and are widely seen as indicators of Oscar success.