Oscar®-winning actor, BFI Fellow and CHANEL Ambassador Tilda Swinton presented October 1 the BFI & CHANEL Filmmaker Awards: Celebrating Creative Audacity. The awards, each valued at £20,000, were presented to three UK filmmakers selected for their “creative audacity and their ambition to explore a new dynamic to their practice.”
The winning filmmakers of the third annual Awards were:
- Pinny Grylls, writer/director (co-writer/co-director Grand Theft Hamlet), documentary
- Luna Carmoon, writer/director (Hoard), fiction
- Naqqash Khalid writer/director (In Camera), fiction
Grand Theft Hamlet is a feature documentary about two out of work actors attempting the impossible task of mounting a full production of Hamlet inside the ultra-violent world of Grand Theft Auto. The film was selected for, among other festivals, CPHDOX, Visions du Réel and Hot Docs. It won the Documentary Feature Jury Award at SXSW 2024.
The BFI/Chanel Filmmaker Award citation for Grand Theft Hamlet reads: “The sheer audacity of her unique approach to storytelling with Grand Theft Hamlet and having the talent to execute it so brilliantly, made Pinny the perfect recipient of this award.”
Previous winners of the BFI/Chanel Filmmaker Award include Ella Glendining, writer/director (Is There Anybody Out There?) who won in 2023, and Kathryn Ferguson, who won in 2022 with her debut award-winning documentary Nothing Compares about Sinead O’Connor.
Guests in attendance at the October 1 BFI/Chanel event included Hugh Grant, Steve McQueen, Richard Gere, Michael Fassbender, Jodie Turner Smith, Jeffrey Wright, Lashana Lynch, Alfonso Cuarón, Naomi Ackie and Josh O’Connor, with event hosts BFI Chair Jay Hunt and BFI Chief Executive Ben Roberts, all there to raise vital funds for the BFI National Archive.
Tilda Swinton was joined on the 2024 BFI & CHANEL Filmmaker Awards jury by Edward Enninful OBE, Editorial Advisor, British Vogue and Global Creative and Cultural Advisor, Vogue, Marie-Louise Khondji, producer and founder of Le Cinéma Club, and BFI Chief Executive Ben Roberts.
Tilda Swinton, on behalf of the BFI & CHANEL Filmmakers Award jury, said: “The three films we have had the honour to spotlight this year represent – with urgency and accuracy – some of the core values the BFI & CHANEL Filmmaker Awards were set up to encourage: self-determination, a reflection on untold life experience and a boundaryless curiosity about the capacities of filmmaking itself, regardless of any limitation. The teams that brought these projects into harbour were all galvanised and led by the sort of practical and inspirational attitude that makes ground-breaking possible in the first place. We honour these individuals tonight and look forward with real eagerness to their road ahead.”
Ben Roberts, Chief Executive of the BFI, said: “It is such a privilege to be part of this prestigious jury for a third year, and to immerse ourselves in the work of shortlisted filmmakers, a truly vibrant and exciting group of up-and-coming talent. Making films for a living is a tough business for UK independent filmmakers, so our partnership with CHANEL is so important, as this unique prize can have such an incredible impact on the careers of the winning filmmakers.”
