Alexander Molochnikov ’25 and Jean Chapiro ’25 Win Big at 2025 BAFTA Student Awards

The British Academy of Film and Television Arts has announced the winners of the 2025 BAFTA Student Awards, and this year Film alums Alexander Molochnikov ’25 and Jean Chapiro ’25 won big, taking home the Live Action Award and the Special Jury Award for their film, Extremist. 

Extremist, which was written and directed by Molochnikov and produced by Chapiro, follows a young Russian artist who makes an anti-war statement by swapping food labels with pacifist messages in a Moscow supermarket, leading to her arrest and the threat of a 10-year prison sentence.

The BAFTA recognition comes after the film's slate of award wins at the 2025 Miloš Forman / Mike Hausman Columbia University Film Festival (CUFF), where it took home the Best Film Award, the James Ponsoldt Award for Best Director, the 3Pas Studios Award for Excellence in Producing, a Jury Select award, and National Board of Review Student Grant nomination.

The film's BAFTA wins are all the more impressive when considered against the number of submissions to the contest—this year, a record breaking over 1,000 submissions by students from schools in 39 countries. 

The annual BAFTA student awards were created to celebrate the next generation of talented and innovative filmmakers, and to help them jump start their filmmaking careers. Winners of the awards are invited to Los Angeles to participate in events and programs designed to expose them and their work to industry professionals, and the opportunity to participate in BAFTA's global talent development programs. 

This year's winners were announced at a special ceremony hosted by Elle Osili-Wood at The Maybourne Beverly Hills in Los Angeles. See a full list of winners here. 

Alexander (Sasha) Molochnikov is a director and writer of theater, film, TV, opera, and ballet. His Bolshoi ballet The Seagull won a Golden Mask Award. After working at the Moscow Art Theater and creating hit works like Tell Her and Monastery, he left Russia for Columbia University after opposing the war in Ukraine.

Jean is a filmmaker and journalist from Mexico. She graduated Summa Cum Laude from The University of Pennsylvania in 2021. She holds an MS in Documentary Journalism from the Columbia Journalism School and an MFA in Creative Producing at Columbia. Her film Hasta Encontrarlos was awarded a Student Academy Award in 2023.