Festival season handed out its short-film honours on Sunday. At the 70th BFI London Film Festival, the Short Film Award went to 'Aman,' directed by Rahul Roye and written by Roye with Elle León Nostas. The India–UK–USA–France production follows a trans man who discovers he is pregnant on the eve of gender-affirming surgery, and the jury praised its nuanced characters and assured storytelling.
Across in Cardiff, the Iris Prize — the UK's major LGBTQ+ short-film award — went to 'Magid / Zafar,' written by Luís Hindman and Sufiyaan Salam and set inside a busy British Pakistani takeaway. Hindman receives the £40,000 prize, presented at BBC Cymru Wales, to make a new LGBTQ+ short film in Wales. The film was backed through Future Takes, the BFI and Film4 initiative.
Hindman, of South Asian and Northern Irish descent, becomes the Iris Prize's third winner from the United Kingdom, according to the organisers. The paired wins put two very different British short films — one a London festival premiere about identity and timing, the other a community-rooted story funded to seed a Welsh production — at the centre of the weekend's film conversation.
The London Film Festival award closes the 70th edition of the BFI's flagship event, which each autumn turns the Southbank and venues across the capital into the centre of the UK film calendar.
