BAFTA Scotland 2024: Scottish horror Out of Darkness wins big

Scotland's film and telly community was out in force last night (Sun 17 Nov) for the annual BAFTA Scotland awards. In terms of film, the big winner of the night was Andrew Cumming's stone age horror Out of Darkness, which picked up three prizes: Best Actor for Kit Young, Best Actress for Sofia Oakley-Green and Best Film, beating out Adura Onashile’s Girl and moving documentary Is There Anybody Out There? This sweep was richly deserved; Out of Darkness is the kind of muscular action film that rarely gets made in Scotland. Director Andrew Cumming clearly has a talent for nail-biting spectacle and we're eagerly looking forward to his next film project. 

Despite his great work behind the camera, Cumming wasn’t even nominated for Best Director: Fiction this year, in an award that’s shared between the small screen and the big screen, but there can’t be any grumbles at the winner. Veteran Scottish director Saul Metzstein took home the prize for his sterling work helming the third series of Apple’s wry spy show Slow Horses. Best Director: Factual went to the mighty Kevin Macdonald for High & Low, his gripping look at the downfall of Dior creative director John Galliano. 

Standup Ashley Storrie won two awards. She was named Best Writer alongside Matilda Curtis for their show Dinosaur and won the public vote prize for her lead performance in that same show. During her speech for Best Writer, Storrie gave a sweet call out to her late mother, Janey Godley, who died earlier this month after a long fight with cancer. She told a story of sneaking into the BAFTAs with Godley when she was just 15. “We went to the afterparty,” recalls Storrie, “and a lady came up and said who are you? My mum said ‘Elaine C Smith’, and the lady just just went, 'Oh, OK'.”

Dinosaur had the most nominations of the night and was competing with the long-running detective series Shetland for best scripted television show, but both were beaten out by the fantastic queer drama Float from Glasgow production house Black Camel. This low-budget show, centred on a poignant 'will they, won’t they' romance between two young women in a small coastal town, started life as a BBC Writersroom project and while accepting the award, its director and executive producer, Arabella Page Croft, noted how important these types of increasingly-rare projects are for fostering new talent. She explained that much of Float’s team – writer Stef Smith, producer Bjorn Hanson, lead actors Hannah Jarrett-Scott and Jessica Hardwick – were making their debuts in scripted television, and Croft herself was directing for the first time. “These training grounds are being swept away in the vulnerable days of funding for the BBC,” says Croft. “Today a tiny show like Float, a true underdog, winning this BAFTA, is another marker of how important these [training initiatives] are.”

Another great training ground for future talent are the films made on Scotland's vibrant short scene, and there was an excellent lineup of short films competing for Best Short Film this year: Jagoda Tlok’s Care, Annabel Moodie’s Friends on the Outside, Debora Maité Bottino’s Your Land and Eubha Akilade’s Blackwool. The latter took home the award. It centres on a London teenager’s first day at a Scottish high school, where she’s bullied by fellow students because of her afro hair. The short was inspired by Akilade’s own experience of discrimination while attending a predominantly white high school in Glasgow’s Southside. "Hair discrimination is a subgenre of racism that's often unspoken, and I believe the biggest trigger of change is empathy," said Akilade while accepting the award. "I hope Blackwool managed to achieve that."

Elsewhere there were wins for David Tennant (for TV drama There She Goes) and Doon Mackichan (for comedy Two Doors Down), but nothing for Richard Gadd. His buzzy Netflix series Baby Reindeer recently won six Emmys but a BAFTA Scotland award won’t be joining them, with the show missing out in the three categories in which it was nominated. 

There were also two lifetime achievement awards handed out last night. Glaswegian casting director Des Hamilton was presented with the BAFTA Scotland Award for Outstanding Contribution to Craft. With a career that’s involved casting for Lynne Ramsay (Morvern Callar), David Mackenzie (Young Adam, Hallum Foe), Andrea Arnold (Wasp, Red Road), Shane Meadows (This Is England), Nicolas Winding Refn (Bronson, Only God Forgives), Lars von Trier (The House that Jack Built, Nymphomaniac), and Claire Denis (High Life, Stars at Noon), it’s more than deserved. Hamilton also delivered the sweetest moment of the night by inviting his elderly mother up on stage to help accept the award.

The biggest award of the night ​​– the BAFTA Scotland Award for Outstanding Contribution to Television – went to veteran sports presenter Hazel Irvine, whose long career has seen her covering practically every sport imaginable, from snooker to golf to table tennis to figure skating to taekwondo.

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For the full list of winners, head to bafta.org/awards/scotland