An independent review of the BAFTA Film Awards has found a “number of structural weaknesses” in planning, escalation procedures, and crisis coordination before John Davidson‘s Tourette’s outburst.

Davidson, an executive producer on the BAFTA-winning I Swear, dominated headlines for weeks after involuntarily shouting the n-word as Michael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindo presented the award for best visual effects at the 79th British Academy Film Awards on Feb. 22.

The BBC has had its own questions to answer after airing the slur despite the two-hour tape delay, and just this week also ruled the incident a breach of the broadcaster’s editorial standards. Chief content officer Kate Phillips has maintained the breach was “not intentional,” though former director-general Tim Davie was unable to say why the ceremony remained available to stream on BBC iPlayer 15 hours after the event.

On Friday, a review commissioned by the BAFTA board and carried out by RISE Associates concluded its findings on what happened and what must change. Sent to The Hollywood Reporter, the review identified “a number of structural weaknesses” across the British Academy’s planning and crisis management.

“However,” said a note from the BAFTA board, “it did not find evidence of malicious intent on the part of those involved in delivering the event. We accept its conclusions in full.”

The board continued: “We apologize unreservedly to the Black community, for whom the racist language used carries real pain, brutality, and trauma; to the disability community, including people with Tourette Syndrome, for whom this incident has led to unfair judgement, stigma, and distress; and to all our members, guests at the ceremony and those watching at home. What was supposed to be a moment of celebration was diminished and overshadowed.”

The statement added: “We have written to those directly impacted on the night to apologize.”

The review is clear that while it is “not a failure of intent,” BAFTA’s planning and processes “have not kept pace with its diversity and inclusion goals.” The board also admits they did not “adequately anticipate or fully prepare for the impact of such an incident in a live event environment and as a result our duty of care to everyone at the ceremony and watching at home fell short.”

Work is already underway to address the specific areas of improvement recommended in the review to reduce the risk of this happening again. This includes improving the escalation process and the chain of information sharing around BAFTA Awards ceremonies, strengthening how they plan for and deliver access, inclusion, and support at their events, and addressing any internal cultural gaps or lack of knowledge that “may prevent BAFTA from meeting its commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion across all our work.”

The BBC, too, has vowed to learn from their mistakes and prevent history from repeating itself. The corporation has set out measures to improve event planning, live production, and the iPlayer takedown processes.

The backlash from the incident lasted weeks. Davidson claimed he was “deeply mortified” if anyone thought his tics were “intentional.” It became a topic of discussion at the NAACP Image Awards, as well as the subject of a bad-taste SNL sketch that had The Hollywood Reporter asking: Is there a U.S.-U.K. gap on Tourette’s education?

Coachella revelers are getting ready to pitch their tents, performing artists are running through their final rehearsals and thousands of global brands are gearing up for what will be one of the biggest content-making weekends of the year.

What began as a grungy early 2000s desert fest has since evolved into a high-end global cultural phenomenon. The Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival at the Empire Polo Club in Indio is regarded as one of the largest of its kind in the world, drawing more than 125,000 people a day across two consecutive weekends in April.

As the festival has grown, so too has the allure for big brands like Guess, Rivian, Soho House and Kendall Jenner’s 818 Tequila looking to capitalize on Coachella as a marketing megaphone.

Both off and on the festival grounds, these brands host a series of parties, pop-ups and other VIP events that lavish celebrities, influencers and artists with premium experiences. The hope is they will then share those experiences with their large online audiences.

The Absolut Heat Haus, Soho House’s VIP pop-up The Hideout, and the Coca-Cola Pop Shop are just a few of the brand activations that aim to build a rapport with the festival audience.

This turn toward a high-end consumer market — which reflects a broader trend among many retailers to cater to the affluent — hasn’t been without its critics, especially from music purists who view the festival as overly commercial.

But in many ways, the festival creates the perfect marketing opportunity for global brands to reach Gen Z consumers, who accounted for approximately 17% of total global consumer spending of $57.6 trillion in 2024, according to Nielsen.

“People come to Coachella with the idea in mind that brands will bring their best foot forward. Not only are they looking for their favorite, tried-and-true brands to be there, but they’re also looking at what’s the next big thing,” said Jessica Lanzon, director of partnerships and experiential at Ciroc.

The vodka maker offers the Ciroc Athletic Club, an invite-only pop-up that includes a padel tournament and many luxury amenities, like customized merch and bottomless cocktails.

Marc Lotenberg, the founder and chief executive of Dorsia, a members-only platform for exclusive restaurant reservations, estimates brands can spend up to tens of millions of dollars at Coachella.

The biggest global stage

“It’s Coachella, then it’s everything else,” said Lotenberg. “Nothing else compares to the amount of eyes that you get during Coachella. It’s the biggest global stage.”

Dorsia hosts the Zenyara party series, an exclusive after-hours gathering that transforms the private lakeside estate into a nightclub.

The company helped introduce Nobu to the festival last year. The famed Japanese restaurant is returning to this year with meals starting at $375 per person.

Dorsia also offers suites at Coachella’s main stage that start at $70,000 per weekend and accommodate 10 guests who will get backstage access, dedicated service and premium amenities.

“There’s no ceiling when it comes to how much people are willing to pay when it comes to experiences,” Lotenberg said.

Music fans at the 2025 Coachella Valley Arts and Music Festival in Indio.

(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)

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Some of Coachella’s most elite attendees won’t spend their day at the actual festival, choosing instead to hop between the many exclusive day parties, powered by brands like Revolve.

Over the last decade, the Cerritos-based online fashion retailer has hosted its own mini-festival featuring A-list performers and a star-studded guest list. Last year, Grammy-winning rappers Lil Wayne and Cardi B performed. The off-site festival held in the Coachella Valley is invite-only and hosts around 2,000 people.

“It was quite simple. We saw the impact pretty immediately in terms of traffic to the site and conversion sales,” said Raissa Gerona, chief brand officer for Revolve. “Because we’ve been doing it for so long, we have become the destination … to shop for all things festival and not just Coachella.”

It’s not all about high fashion and luxury mansions. The spirit of outdoor camping is in Coachella’s DNA. The nature-themed boutique hotel company AutoCamp and electric-truck maker Rivian have partnered up for Camp Rivian.

The companies are hosting a curated group of influencers and media partners to stay at a pop-up campsite featuring AutoCamp’s modernized Airstreams. Invitees get the opportunity to test drive Rivian’s newest R2 SUV to the festival and indulge in the communal glamping site.

AutoCamp’s Chief Operating Officer, Bryan Terzi, said it felt like the right moment to try out a deluxe festival camping concept.

People at the flower installation at the 2025 Coachella Vally Arts and Music Festival in Indio.

(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)

“People would really get it because it’s happening at Coachella,” he said. “I don’t know if this type of experience would really work at other smaller festivals like Austin City Limits.”

L.A.-based clothing retailer Guess is going all-in on the accommodations with its Guess Compound. The denim brand rents out ten of the valley’s most luxurious villas, hosts up to 60 people, provides high-end amenities like IV drips, massage therapy and an onsite coffee pop-up from La La Land and puts on exclusive after-parties.

Nicolai Marciano, the chief business development officer at Guess, said the effort is about creating more brand equity and building relationships within Coachella’s creative community.

“There’s a lot of different types of talent from musical artists performing to people from reality TV shows and people that make great content — when you put them all together, it’s exciting to watch as an end consumer,” Marciano said.

Claudio Bravo, of Bravo Luxury Retreats, is the chief executive behind the private luxury community next to the festival that hosts Guess. The property contains 16 villas with more than 100 bedrooms, as well as a standalone 10-acre estate set aside for high-end stays and brand activations.

During festival season, Bravo charges around $150,000 for a weekend at one of the villas. He sells out every year, up to six months in advance, catering to wealthy individuals and corporate clients.

“These houses are very luxury, very modern. You feel like you are in a resort,” said Bravo. “I built these houses especially for this – like I was building a hotel.”

Bravo is developing another 14-villa project in nearby La Quinta, which hosts annual professional golf events.

Walker Drawas, a brand marketing agency which has worked at Coachella for years, is involved in six events at the festival, including Kendall Jenner’s “818 Outpost.”

“Brands today are starved for content and starved for news,” said Adam Drawas, co-founder of the agency. “The consumer needs to engage with newness and new content so many times a day, and so brands really need a content wonderland that can give them a big bank of content.”

Sean Breuner, the chief executive of luxury rental company Avant Stay, said at each of their properties, renters will interact with products and amenities from 15 to 20 brands — many of them in the fridge — seeking out high-end consumers.

VIPs expect a private chef, a driver to take them back and forth to the festival grounds or auxiliary events, private security, IV drips provided at home, an on-call cleaner and private tennis or pickleball lessons.

“The majority of festivals you go to don’t have art installations or people who are dressed to the nines in festival outfits,” Breuner said.

Drawas said he believes the market is only going to keep expanding.

“This began in music. It transitioned into fashion,” added Drawas. “Now it’s just a consumer wonderland.”

How do you follow up a movie that begins with a woman being impregnated by a Cadillac and then travels so far from that point that by the end it could reasonably be described as tender? For Julia Ducournau—the sick, twisted, and, yes, French mind behind instant body-horror classics Raw (2016) and Titane (2021)—you retreat inward instead of expanding outward: more personal, more small-scale, and much, much more baffling.

Her third feature film, Alpha, could be described as an AIDS allegory, a sci-fi fable about familial trauma, or maybe an unsentimental addiction drama if you really want to get understated about it. In no world, however, is this the same brand of horror film on which Ducournau built her reputation. The title character is a 13-year-old girl who in the opening scene is given a stick-and-poke tattoo with a dirty needle while high at a party. The tattoo is a jagged “A” for “Alpha,” on her bicep, and while she’s anxious about the visible infection and accompanying oozing, her mother is much more concerned about an incurable autoimmune disease that has been spreading via bodily fluids since the mid 80s. If this unnamed virus sounds eerily familiar, then you already know the symptoms: Patients begin coughing up red dust, then their skin turns to craggly stone, and over time their entire body solidifies into polished marble. As Alpha waits for her test results, her classmates begin to viciously excommunicate her as a possible disease vector, and, to complicate things further, her mom’s heroin-addicted brother moves into Alpha’s bedroom for the indefinite future to detox for good.

As we hopscotch back and forth in time, eventually building to a climax that takes place in both the past and the present at once, things get unwieldy. Narrative coherence starts to slip away, and the bonk-you-over-the-head literary references begin to bonk with ever-greater force. This is a movie in which a young woman is literally branded with a scarlet letter “A” that turns her community against her, and that’s before the mysterious figure in red from Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death” makes a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo. You may find it all a bit pretentious.

But subtlety is passé, and even if the pieces that make up Alpha never quite fit together, it’s still extraordinary on a scene-by-scene basis. I scoffed at the AIDS-but-they-turn-into-rocks virus, but when Alpha makes eye contact with her teacher at a clinic, arm-in-arm with his dying boyfriend, there’s a sense of gutting reality that cuts through any genre trappings. Ducournau is making an AIDS film, a COVID film, a grief film, and a film about her Berber identity, and she’s doing it all in a way no other director would ever think to do it.

More than anything, it’s thrilling to be blindsided by a film that dares to take big swings in 2026, when only the most risk-averse filmmakers survive and everyone else gets chewed up and spat out by one of the five remaining studios. When given the choice between an interesting mess and a safe success, I know my answer. R, 128 min.

Limited release in theaters