National Film Awards UK nominees or films must be based in the country of origin except the Best Foreign Film category. 2016, the mobile network O2 (UK) sponsored the awards During the ceremony, National Film Awards UK pauses to pay tribute to those in the industry who died over the previous twelve months, with a montage of images accompanied by music. In 2016 the legendary late actor Alan Rickman was honored. In 2015 Dame Judi Dench was voted by academy members to receive the Lifetime Achievement Award whilst the 2016 recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award was Dame Helen Mirren David Jason and Nicholas
Ladies in Lavender in French-speaking Canada. Both Judi Dench and Maggie Smith were nominated for Best European Actress at the European Film Awards. Dench was nominated for the ALFS Award for British Actress of the Year by the London Film Critics Circle. The film was positively received by the critics. In his review in "The New York Times", critic Stephen Holden wrote: [Dench and Smith] sink into their roles as comfortably as house cats burrowing into a down quilt on a windswept, rainy night... This amiably far-fetched film... heralds the return of the Comfy Movie (increasingly rare nowadays), the cinematic equivalent of a