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Chris Morris - Outstanding Debut Award Winner in 2011

13 February 2011
Four Lions actors Nigel Lindsay and Adeel Akhtar collect Chris Morris' BAFTA. (Pic: BAFTA/Richard Kendal)(Pic: BAFTA/Richard Kendal)

Writer/ director Chris Morris won the 2011 BAFTA award for Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director or Producer.

Four Lions actors Nigel Lindsay and Adeel Akhtar accepted the BAFTA mask on behalf of Chris Morris. Watch them talk with Edith Bowman in this exclusive backstage winners interview:

WINNER: Chris Morris (Director), Four Lions

Four LionsFour Lions is a satirical comedy about an inept group of jihadist terrorists planning to bomb the London marathon.

Chris Morris is a writer, director, performer and producer whose television comedy credits include The Day Today, Brass Eye, Jam and Nathan Barley. He has been BAFTA-nominated three times for his television work and won a BAFTA in 2002 for the short film My Wrongs 8245-8249 & 117.

! Find out more about all of the nominees in this category.

Clio Barnard (Director), Tracy O’Riordan (Producer), The Arbor

Clio Shooting The ArborloThe Arbor tells the true story of Bradford playwright Andrea Dunbar (The Arbor, Rita, Sue and Bob Too) and her daughter, Lorraine. The film consists of actors lip-synching to genuine interviews with other members of the Dunbar family and their neighbours, intercut with footage of a live outdoor performance of her first play on the estate where she lived. Clio Barnard is an artist filmmaker whose work has been shown in cinemas, film festivals, galleries and on television. Her previous work, including several short films, has been concerned with the relationship between fictional film language and documentary. She grew up near Bradford, in the same area as Andrea Dunbar. Tracy O’Riordan worked as a drama development executive and story editor before moving into physical production. Tracy line-produced Song of Songs and was part of the production team on the BAFTA-winning The Queen. Tracy also oversaw the development and production of three micro-budget feature films for Digital Departures, including Terence Davies’ Of Time and the City.

!!! Banksy (Director), Jaimie D’Cruz (Producer), Exit Through The Gift Shop

Exit Through the Gift ShopRevolverExit Through the Gift Shop is a documentary about Thierry Guetta, an LA-based French filmmaker who had been assembling a documentary on street art in which he wanted Banksy to feature. When the two met and became friends, Banksy convinced Thierry to put down his camera, hand over his tapes and allow Banksy to finish the film, which charts Thierry’s unlikely transformation into a street artist himself.

Banksy is an internationally known graffiti artist whose work can be seen on walls all over the world. His real identity is kept as a closely guarded secret to avoid prosecution and he has so far resisted all attempts to be captured on film. Jaimie D’Cruz met Banksy briefly over a decade ago when he was the editor of Touch, an underground music magazine which also ran features on street art, and was approached by him to help put the film together.

!!! Gareth Edwards (Director/Writer), Monsters

Monsters Monsters is a sci-fi road movie in which a journalist is charged with escorting his boss’s daughter back to the USA through a quarantined area of Mexico infested with alien life forms. Gareth Edwards is a visual effects designer who has been nominated twice for BAFTA Television Craft Awards for Visual Effects, winning for Hiroshima. He entered Sci-Fi London’s 48 hour short film contest to prove that a cinematic film could be made with no crew and just one actor in two days; Monsters was made with the same ethos, filmed on a micro-budget in Mexico, with the effects and production design done digitally by Edwards himself in post-production.

!!!Nick Whitfield (Director/Writer), Skeletons

SkeletonsSkeletons is a surreal comedy about a mismatched pair of travelling salesman who offer the unusual service of exposing hidden secrets and removing skeletons from closets. Nick Whitfield started his career as an actor, mainly in touring theatre, before studying comedy and drama with theatre director Philippe Gaulier in Paris. He began writing his own one-man shows, which played all over the UK and Ireland, and his show Roadmovie was recently staged in Brazil. Whitfield has made several short films, including an earlier version of Skeletons.