Edinburgh International Film Festival has announced the winners of the new Sean Connery Prize for Feature Filmmaking Excellence and The Thelma Schoonmaker Prize for Short Filmmaking Excellence.
The Ceremony, by Jack King has won the £50,000 Sean Connery prize for Feature Filmmaking Excellence.
In the competition for best short, Manny Wolfe, directed by Jack King, is the winner of the £15,000 Thelma Schoonmaker Prize for Short Filmmaking Excellence.
Jack King, who is from Bradford, West Yorkshire centres The Ceremony, shot in black and white, on the story of two migrant workers who are forced to bury a colleague on the moors. When one demands to perform the dead man his rightful Islamic burial, nerves begin to fray and a righteous power struggle emerges as the long and bitter winter night closes in on them.
Californian film maker and actor Trevor Neuhoff, who won the prize for short film excellence with Manny Wolf has created a study of an actor exhausted by Tinseltown. After nonstop rejection, a chance encounter sets him up to get a role in a major monster movie. Does Manny sacrifice artistic integrity and take the job? Or is there another path?
The winner of The Thelma Schoonmaker Prize for Short Filmmaking Excellence Competition is MANNY WOLFE, directed by Trevor Neuhoff.
Both awards were decided by an audience vote during the Edinburgh International Film Festival, which ran from August 15 – 21.
