Festival film award goes to trawler movie

The Edinburgh International Film Festival award for Best British film has been given to a documentary set aboard a North Atlantic fishing trawler.
By The Newsroom
Published 29th Jun 2013, 01:00 BST

The Edinburgh International Film Festival award for Best British film has been given to a documentary set aboard a North Atlantic fishing trawler.

Leviathan, directed by Lucien Castaing-Taylor, was given the Michael Powell Award by a jury chaired by Iranian director Samira Makhmalbaf and including Scottish actor/ director Kevin McKidd and film critic Derek Malcolm.

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The Audience Award, reinstated for 2013 after a two-year absence, went to another documentary. Fire In the Night, directed by Anthony Wonke, detailing the 1988 Piper Alpha disaster in the North Sea. EIFF artistic director Chris Fujiwara said: “The Audience Award is not only one of the most 
significant of EIFF’s initiatives designed to engage audiences with cinema, it’s also one of the most fun.”

A World Not Ours, directed by Mahdi Fleifel, won Best Film in the International competition. Fleifel said he hoped the award would “help bring our film to a wider audience in the UK and I would like to thank the jury for this wonderful honour.”

The festival will close on Sunday night with a screening of John McKay’s Not Another Happy Ending, featuring former Dr Who star Karen ­Gillan.