The Edinburgh International Film Festival closed out yesterday with the announcement of the winners of the new Sean Connery Prize for Feature Filmmaking Excellence, and The Thelma Schoonmaker Prize for Short Filmmaking Excellence.
The Ceremony, directed by Jack King, won the Sean Connery Prize and £50,000 prize money, out of ten features in competition.
Manny Wolfe, directed by Trevor Neuhoff, won the Thelma Schoonmaker Prize for Short Filmmaking Excellence and £15,000 prize money.
The awards were presented at the Cameo Cinema in Edinburgh by Jason Connery on behalf of The Connery Foundation and by film editor Thelma Schoonmaker.
Emotional punch
In The Ceremony, two migrant workers are forced to bury a colleague in the Yorkshire hills. 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.
“Beautifully directed and performed and shot in stark black and white with a vivid sense of visual splendour, this humane and moving film packs quite the emotional punch,” said the EIFF of The Ceremony.
Director Jack King is a self-taught writer/director & film-maker from Bradford, Yorkshire. He started out making music videos for independent and major record labels, and his work has racked up repeated Vimeo staff picks and millions of views online.
He has since made several short films, both publicly funded and independent, including Prints which was shot on location in Japan and premiered at Clermont Ferrand in 2019 before going on to play at festivals worldwide. His most recent short Predators supported by BFI Network was nominated for a UK critics circle award earlier this year after premiering at BFI London Film Festival in 2023.
Whilst working on debut 'The Ceremony' King has also been developing a handful of features for international collaboration, including Sunburn which was selected for EIFF Talent Lab Connects in 2022 and Snowbird recently awarded a development grant from the Great British Sasakawa Foundation.
Manny Wolfe
The winner of The Thelma Schoonmaker Prize for Short Filmmaking Excellence Competition was Manny Wolfe, directed by Trevor Neuhoff.
It’s 1947. Manny Wolf is an actor exhausted by Tinseltown. He also happens to be a real werewolf. 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?
A graduate of NYU's Tisch School of the Arts in 2013, Neuhoff is a director, writer, producer and occasional actor. He spent almost a decade working for Robert Downey Jr. and Susan Downey. He joined Downey on many sets before serving as Co-Executive Producer on Downey Jr.'s Max TV series Downey’s Dream Cars. He's made music videos, short docs, and short narrative films that live on the internet and resides in Los Angeles, California.
“These new EIFF awards were set up to support new and emerging filmmakers in their careers,” said EIFF Director, Paul Ridd. “Both these films show immense vision and skill at connecting with audiences and we wish both filmmakers the very best for the future.”