Tilda Swinton presents the winners of the BFI & Chanel Filmmaker Awards 2025
The annual awards celebrate creative audacity among emerging UK filmmakers.
Oscar-winning actor, BFI Fellow and CHANEL Ambassador Tilda Swinton today (16 October) presented this year’s BFI & CHANEL Filmmaker Awards: Celebrating Creative Audacity to emerging UK filmmakers: writer/director Harry Lighton (Pillion), The Neurocultures Collective (Sam Chown-Ahern, Georgia Bradburn, Benjamin Brown, Robin Elliott-Knowles, Lucy Walker) and artist-filmmaker Steven Eastwood (creators of The Stimming Pool) and writer/director Sandhya Suri (Santosh).
Tilda Swinton was joined by members of the jury Edward Enninful OBE, Co-Founder and Chief Creative Officer of EE72, and BFI Chief Executive Ben Roberts, to present the winning filmmakers with their awards. Selected for their creative audacity and ambition to explore a new dynamic to their practice, each of the three award winners received financial support of £20,000. This will enable them to expand their work and explore new ideas, cultivate co-creation and knowledge exchange, and widen the representation of voices in today’s cultural community. The awards also support the BFI’s mission to back the next generation of UK independent filmmaking talent.
2025 marks 100 years of CHANEL in the UK. The relationship between Chanel and film first started when Gabrielle Chanel travelled to Hollywood in 1930 to dress the leading actresses of the day, and transformed them into style icons. A century on, and the story of CHANEL and film continues through partnerships with institutions and festivals around the world. Since 2022, CHANEL has partnered with the BFI and together they have created the Filmmaker Awards. Through this partnership with the BFI, CHANEL continues to champion creativity, culture and craftsmanship in the UK, and support future British creative talents into the next century and beyond.
Swinton, on behalf of the BFI & CHANEL Filmmakers Award jury said: “Once again, a highlight of the year for my fellow jurors and I: a glimpse, not only of phenomenally impressive projects achieved, but, even more excitingly, of groundbreaking new voices proposing new perspectives that widen the cinematic landscape and promise enlightening and inventive horizons ahead. We are enormously proud of this prize and the opportunity it gives us to offer encouragement and support for each of these distinctly original artists at what we feel sure is the beginning of their audacious and nourishing life’s work.”
Ben Roberts, Chief Executive of the BFI, said: “We are thrilled to continue our partnership with CHANEL and award these unique awards to some of the UK’s brightest filmmakers. This year’s winners have all made startling and moving films, and we hope this award offers them the space and freedom to continue to take risks and be audacious in the next steps of their careers.”
What the jury said
About Harry Lighton, writer/director of Pillion:
“Pillion is authoritative, fresh, English, quaint, and well-made, all while maintaining a vulnerable heart and radical in its absence of shame. The film announces Harry as an exciting new filmmaking voice, and we hope the prize provides him the freedom to continue to experiment.”
About The Neurocultures Collective and Steven Eastwood, co-creators of The Stimming Pool:
“In The Stimming Pool, the team have created something completely new, beautiful and educative without ever being patronising. The film had such a potent and lasting impact with us an audience, and we were compelled by this powerful showcase of true collaboration.”
About Sandhya Suri, writer/director of Santosh
“Cliché-free, with incredible performances, but it was Sandhya’s confident and captivating direction of her script of complex characters, that really impressed us. We also noted her bravery and poise in not only telling this important story but also in bringing it to audiences around the world.”
BFI & Chanel Filmmaker Awards winners 2022 to 2024
Previous winners include Kathryn Ferguson, who won in 2022 with her debut award-winning documentary Nothing Compares about Sinead O’Connor and has since directed Bogart: Life Comes in Flashes, a documentary about the Hollywood icon for Universal; Savannah Leaf, who won in 2023 with Earth Mama and went on to win the 2024 BAFTA for Best Debut British Writer; and Director and Producer Pinny Grylls who won in 2024 as the co-writer and co-director of Grand Theft Hamlet which won The Raindance Maverick Award at the British Independent Film Awards that year.
2024 Filmmaker Awards:
- Luna Carmoon, writer/director (Hoard)
- Pinny Grylls, writer/director (co-writer/co-director Grand Theft Hamlet)
- Naqqash Khalid writer/director (In Camera)
2023 Filmmaker Awards:
- Ella Glendining, writer/director (director and cast of Is There Anybody Out There?)
- Savanah Leaf, writer/director/producer (writer/director of Earth Mama)
- Nadira Murray, producer (Winners)
2022 Filmmaker Awards:
- Baff Akoto, artist/director (producer of The Queen of Glory)
- Kathryn Ferguson, writer/director (Nothing Compares)
- Sam Firth, director/producer (The Wolf Suit)
- Erfan Saadati director/producer (Child of Empire)
The jury’s decision and deliberation covers the filmmaker’s body of work and the strength of their application, and each nominee had to have a work released and/or showcased between 1 January 2024 to 30 June 2025 to be eligible.
For the 2025 award, the winners were selected from a shortlist of seven filmmakers, developed through a process of collaboration and consultation with experienced professionals from across the sector. A group of industry experts each nominated filmmakers, who were then invited to apply for the awards. Producers, writers, directors, or writer/directors were eligible if they were UK residents, had made one or two features or XR/immersive works which have been released in the UK or presented at a leading UK or international film festival.