BFI selects three finalists, jury for £50k emerging filmmaker bursary

The BFI has selected the three filmmakers on the shortlist for its IWC Schaffhausen Filmmaker Bursary Award, which gives a £50,000 prize to a UK-based writer, director or writer-director with a first or second film at the BFI London Film Festival.

The chosen three this year are Rose Glass, writer-director of Saint Maud; Hong Khaou, writer-director of Monsoon; and Peter Mackie Burns, director of Rialto.

All three are previous Screen Stars of Tomorrow: Burns in 2005, Khaou in 2013, and Glass in 2018.

The winner will be chosen by a panel headed by Oscar-winning filmmaker Danny Boyle, alongside outgoing BFI CEO Amanda Nevill and Christoph Grainger-Herr, CEO of IWC Schaffhausen.

Glass’ psychological horror Saint Maud has its world premiere in the Midnight Madness section at Toronto Film Festival next week. Khaou’s romantic drama Monsoon starring Henry Golding launched at Karlovy Vary in July, while Burns’ Rialto had a Venice debut earlier this month.

The shortlist was chosen by a panel of senior industry figures consisting of Rose Garnett, director of BBC Films; Ollie Madden, head of creative at Film4; Ben Roberts, BFI deputy chief executive; Tricia Tuttle, director of BFI Festivals; and Larushka Ivan-Zadeh, chief film critic at Metro newspaper.

The winner will be chosen and the award presented at the BFI’s Luminous fundraising gala on Tuesday, October 1.

This is the fourth edition of the award; previous winners are Hope Dickson Leach for The Levelling in 2016, Daniel Kokotajlo for Apostasy in 2017 and Richard Billingham for Ray & Liz last year.

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