An Edinburgh-based filmmaker has been awarded a substantial bursary which recognises outstanding British talent.
Director Hope Dickson Leach will receive £50,000 as part of the IWC Filmmaker Bursary Award, which is designed to support a writer or director at the beginning of their career.
She was presented with the award, given in association with the British Film Institute (BFI), at a star-studded gala dinner in London, hosted by Rob Brydon.
Ms Dickson Leach said: "Winning this award means everything to me, my life has just changed.
"This generous bursary from IWC and the BFI means I can now comfortably enter into developing my second feature with excitement and ambition and I just can't wait to get going."
Her film, The Levelling, was selected from thousands of entries to make it into the running for the award at the BFI London Film Festival.
She was selected as the winner by an esteemed shortlisting panel of film industry experts, with the final decision made by a board comprising Amanda Nevill, chief executive of the BFI, Georges Kern, chief executive of IWC Schaffhausen, and this year’s guest judge, renowned actor Sir John Hurt.
The director added: "Being awarded something that's being judged by your peers is doubly fantastic.
"The fact they have seen something in my work that they want to nurture and encourage is just brilliant."
The bursary, the most significant of its kind in the UK film industry, offers filmmakers financial stability at the beginning of their careers, giving them the needed to develop their ideas.
As a working mother-of-two, Ms Dickson Leach said the money gives her the "gift of time".
"I'm a mother, and being a mother and a filmmaker is tricky," she said.
"I can now solidly book in some childcare and organise my life better."
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