14/11/2005

Four feature film debuts won the top awards at BAFTA Scotland Awards that took place last night in Glasgow. Gaby Dellal’s already multiple-award winning film On a Clear Day starring Peter Mullan as an unemployed man who redeems his life by swimming across the channel, won the Best Film and Best Screenplay award (for Alex Rose). The film sold by Icon Entertainment International was released in the UK by Icon On 2 September.
Annie Griffin’s Festival an Altman-style ensemble piece produced by Young Pirates Film with support from the UK Film Council, Film4and Scottish Screen, also received two major awards for Best Actor (Chris O’Dowd) and Best Direction. The film sold internationally by Portman Entertainment was released last July by Pathé Distribution in the UK.

Frozen [+see also:
trailer
film profile], the feature debut of writer/director Juliet McKoen whose previous work includes the BAFTA/Kodak winning-short Mavis And The Mermaid won the Best Actress award thanks to the remarkable performance of Shirley Henderson (Wilbur Wants To Kill Himself [+see also:
trailer
film profile]). In the film co-produced by Mark Lavender’s Liminal Films in the UK with Zentropa Entertainment in Denmark, Henderson plays a woman haunted by the sudden disappearance of her older sister. Shot predominatly on HD on location in Fleetwood, Lancashire, the film uses the beautiful frozen landscape of Morecambe Bay as a visual representation of the character’s emotional state. International sales are handled by Copenhagen-based Trust Film Sales.
The fourth major winner of the evening was Adrian Mead’s Night People which received the Cineworld/Audience Award. Mead who spent 20 years of his life travelling the world as hairdresser and nightclub bouncer before turning to filmmaking, used HD to shoot Edinburgh at night through the stories of a group of characters who each separately, have all night to make a decision that will change their lives forever.

Another major award, The Outstanding Achievement in Film was given to the Scottish producer Iain Smith behind memorable films like Local Hero (1983), The Mission (1986) or more recently Cold Mountain.