BFI & Chanel Filmmaker Award: ‘Pillion’ Director Harry Lighton Among 2025 Winners 

The BFI today announced the winners of its fourth annual Filmmaker Awards, hosted in partnership with French fashion house Chanel.

The 2025 winners are writer-director Harry Lighton (Pillion), The Neurocultures Collective, along with artist-filmmaker Steven Eastwood, who together created the hybrid feature The Stimming Pool (2024), and writer-director Sandhya Suri (Santosh). The members of The Neurocultures Collective are Sam Chown-Ahern, Georgia Bradburn, Benjamin Brown, Robin Elliott-Knowles, and Lucy Walker.

The award comes with a £20,000 prize and was presented this afternoon at Claridges in London by the jury, led by Tilda Swinton, Edward Enninful, Co-Founder & Chief Creative Officer of EE72, and BFI Chief Executive Ben Roberts.

Previous winners of the Filmmaker Award include Kathryn Ferguson, who won in 2022 with her debut award-winning documentary Nothing Compares about Sinead O’Connor. Ferguson has since directed Bogart: Life Comes in Flashes, a documentary about the Hollywood icon for Universal. Savannah Leaf won in 2023 with Earth Mama and went on to win the 2024 BAFTA for Best Debut British Writer. Director and producer Pinny Grylls 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.

“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,” Tilda Swinton said in a statement.

“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, added: “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.”

BFI & CHANEL FILMMAKER AWARDS WINNERS 2022-2024 

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)