Two Black Boys in Paradise: The queer film you probably don’t know that just won a BAFTA

Sunday’s (22 February) televised BAFTA ceremony was glaringly light on LGBTQ+ stories, bar Harry Lighton’s leather romcom Pillion. Despite three nominations, it didn’t manage to take a gong home.

Yet there was one big, or rather short, queer winner at the 2026 BAFTAs. In the British Short Animation category, the winner of which wasn’t announced during the BBC’s main TV broadcast, Two Black Boys in Paradise reigned victorious. It managed to beat off competition from 2026 Oscar nominee Cardboard and Luce Angus’s short, Solstice.

The nine-minute-long short film follows teenagers Eden and Dula who “embark on a journey of self-acceptance and love – for each other and themselves,” the film’s official synopsis reads.

“Their love for each other, and their refusal to hide it, lands them in a paradise free from shame and judgement.”

Jordan Stephens, the Rizzle Kicks singer, author and host of BBC podcast Miss Me? narrates the film, with Arun Blair-Mangat voicing the two characters.

Two Black Boys in Paradise is based on the poem of the same name by award-winning poet and author Dean Atta, who co-wrote the animation’s script alongside producer Ben Jackson.

Jackson had asked Atta to turn it into a stop-motion animation after watching him read it live.

Jackson, Atta and the film’s director Baz Sells then spent five years working on the film with a team of over 100 people.

“It’s been on such an incredible journey,” Atta told Queerly on the red carpet at the BAFTAs.

“I saw Black and queer stories but they were always tragedies so I’m so glad we have the opportunity to tell a joyous story. There are some struggles within our story but they overcome and they’re celebrated and they’re joyous at the end and that’s what I needed to see when I was younger,” he added.

Atta shared a similar sentiment on stage while accepting the BAFTA, explaining how he had grown up without much positive Black and queer representation.

Jackson told Queerly that, after going through school under Margaret Thatcher’s reviled Section 28 law, which forbade the “promotion” of homosexuality by local authority institutions including schools, he didn’t come out until age 30.

“My whole school life, being queer wasn’t allowed to be talked about in a positive way. I really wanted to make a queer film to help me along my journey of self acceptance and also then to put something out into the world that other people can see and feel seen,” he explained.

In a separate interview with HeyUGuys, Atta said that BAFTA was “making a statement” by awarding a queer, Black story.

“I feel like that’s a good thing to reflect upon: hopefully this is saying something to the industry that we need more of these types of stories to be told. We need the resources, the budget, for us to tell our stories our way,” he said.

“As a storyteller, I want to celebrate Black queer love and joy,” he told The British Blacklist in December.

“I don’t want to shy away from the challenges, but I want to offer hope for a better future and occasionally a much-needed escape from reality. Paradise in our film is very much a fantasy world, but it’s a world, that even through the imagining, people can imagine themselves in; they might bring a little bit of paradise into their real lives.”

Two Black Boys in Paradise is streaming now on Channel 4’s streaming service in the UK.

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