The 79th Edinburgh Film Festival has announced its competition winners as the festival concluded, with Kieron J. Walsh’s Skintown and Sinda Agha’s Grief Room taking its major feature and short filmmaking prizes. The audience-voted awards, announced on closing night, bring both films significant recognition and financial support as their filmmakers move forward with future projects.
Skintown won the Sean Connery Prize for Feature Filmmaking Excellence, securing £50,000 to support Kieron J. Walsh’s future work. The prize was decided by festival audiences after ten feature-length world premieres competed in the 2026 programme. Skintown also had its own world premiere at Edinburgh, giving viewers their first opportunity to see the film before it emerged as the competition winner.
Set in Northern Ireland in 1994 during the IRA ceasefire, Skintown follows best friends Vinny and Jonty as their lives and ambitions unfold against a changing political and cultural background. The story is also connected to the energy of youth culture and the era’s rave scene, as the pair look beyond the limits of small-town life. Chris Walley, Jack Rowan, Jamie-Lee O’Donnell and Hope Ikpoku Jr. are among the film’s cast, bringing the story’s friendships and tensions to the screen.
The short-film prize went to Sinda Agha’s Grief Room, which won the Thelma Schoonmaker Prize for Short Filmmaking Excellence. Like the feature competition, the winner was selected through an audience vote. Ten short-film world premieres competed, and Grief Room also received its first festival screening at Edinburgh. The award gives Sinda Agha £15,000 to support future projects.
Grief Room centres on three estranged sisters who reunite at their sharp-tongued mother’s deathbed to say goodbye. The dark comedy brings the sisters together at a difficult moment, using their family history and strained relationships to shape the story. The film stars Emily Beecham, Daisy Bevan and Louisa Harland, whose performances place the emotional and comic tensions between the sisters at the centre of the short.
The audience-voted format gives both awards a particular connection to the people who watched the films during the festival. Rather than being chosen by a conventional jury, Skintown and Grief Room were selected directly by viewers experiencing the world premieres and wider competition programme. That response matters because Edinburgh’s two centrepiece prizes are designed not only to recognise strong filmmaking but also to provide practical support for what comes next.
Jason Connery presented the awards on behalf of The Connery Foundation on the festival’s final night. EIFF CEO and Festival Director Paul Ridd said the standard across this year’s competition had been high and welcomed the audience response to both winning films. His comments also reflected the festival’s wider aim of introducing new work and filmmakers to audiences at an important early stage in their journeys.
The prizes are supported by The Connery Foundation and sit at the heart of EIFF’s effort to discover filmmaking talent. Their combined £65,000 in funding offers room to develop ideas, prepare productions and build new projects on the visibility created by the festival.
For Skintown, the £50,000 prize adds practical backing to the attention created by a successful world premiere. For Grief Room, the £15,000 award offers similar support within the short-film space, where recognition can help filmmakers continue developing their work. In both cases, the financial element makes the prizes more than a closing-night honour.
The results also underline the role Edinburgh can play as a launchpad for new cinema. Both competitions brought together world premieres, giving audiences a direct part in deciding which films would receive the festival’s major filmmaking awards. As Skintown and Grief Room leave Edinburgh with recognition and funding, the wins give Kieron J. Walsh and Sinda Agha a stronger platform to continue their careers and develop the projects that follow.
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