Embedded Files
Our jury members are experienced and award winning professionals who will vote in November-December 2026 to choose award winners among films finalists.
Daragh Carville
Screenwriter / Showrunner
Daragh Carville is a playwright and screenwriter, best known for co-creating and writing the ITV crime drama The Bay. First broadcast on ITV in 2019, The Bay has been sold to over 130 countries worldwide.
Daragh’s other TV credits include Being Human (BBC3, 2013), 6 Degrees (BBC NI, 2013/15) and The Smoke (Kudos/Sky One, 2014). His films are Middletown (dir. Brian Kirk, 2006) and Cherrybomb (dir. Lisa Barros d’Sa / Glen Leyburn, 2008.) Work for radio includes Regenerations (BBC Radio 3, 2001), which was nominated for the Richard Imison Award, and Dracula (Radio 4, 2003) starring Michael Fassbender.
Daragh Carville has won both the Stewart Parker and the Meyer Whitworth awards for playwriting and has twice been nominated as Best Writer in the Irish Film and TV Awards. He teaches Scriptwriting at Birkbeck, University of London.
Nicola Harrison
Actor
Nicola Harrison is a talented British actress and Lancaster University English Literature and Theatre Studies graduate who has built an impressive career across television and film.
She began her screen career with notable films including Control (2007), the Ian Curtis biopic, The Impossible (2012), My Brother the Devil (2012), and Marrowbone (2017).
Harrison's television work includes popular British series such as Misfits, Hollyoaks (2013), Casualty, Call the Midwife, Doctors, , and Emmerdale. More recent appearances include The Singapore Grip (ITV), Good Omens (Amazon Prime), Somewhere Boy (C4), and Insomnia (Paramount).
Beyond screen work, she has extensive theatre credits at prestigious venues.
Roger Ashton-Griffiths
Actor / Writer / Director
Roger Ashton-Griffiths is a distinguished British character actor, screenwriter, and film director, best known for his role as Mace Tyrell in HBO's Game of Thrones (2011-2019). Born in Hertfordshire, he read music at Lancaster University, graduating in 1978, and began his career as a singer with English National Opera at the London Coliseum.
He has appeared in numerous high-profile films, including Terry Gilliam's Brazil (1985) and The Brothers Grimm (2005), Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York (2002), Roman Polanski's Pirates (1986), Peter Greenaway's The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989), A Knight's Tale (2001), The Lobster (2015), and Woody Allen's You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger (2010). His television work includes The Tudors (2007-2010), Doctor Who (2005-), Father Brown (2013-), and Coronation Street (1960-).
Roger holds an MA in Fine Art from the University of East London (2003) and a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia (2016).
Philip Herd
Producer
Philip Herd is an independent film producer from "Chromatic Aberration Pictures" known for such films as "My Policeman" (2022), "Archive" (2020) and Lynne Ramsay's "We Need to Talk About Kevin" (2011). His recent feature film "Unicorns" (2023) premiered at Toronto Film Festival and was screened at the London Film Festival.
Philip is originally from Morecambe and he is the patron of The Bay International Film Festival.
Maryam Ghorbankarimi
Film Scholar / Filmmaker
Dr Maryam Ghorbankarimi is a filmmaker and film scholar, focusing on representation of women both in front of and behind the camera. Her current research is on transnational cinemas and cultures, specifically the representation of gender and sexuality in Iranian cinema. Her first book entitled A Colourful Presence; The Evolution of Women’s Representation in Iranian Cinema was published in 2015. Her second book is on seminal Iranian female filmmaker Rakhshan Banietemad, ReFocus: The Works of Rakhshan Banietemad was published in spring 2021. She started her production company Bina Film in 2020 and has been collaborating with other local filmmakers in the Northwest England.
Christine Mackie
Actor
Christine trained at Rose Bruford College and started her career as a drama teacher, during which time she worked alongside BBC Schools radio on an in Education project with her students and the Perspectives Theatre Company. Her first job as an actor was here at the Dukes with the T.I.E company creating several devised shows and touring in schools throughout Lancashire. Further TIE work with Coventry Belgrade led to her first writing project, Handsome Terms (co – written with Alison Altman) to which school children attended the show on the Belgrade main stage instead of their school halls. She also joined the Women’s Theatre Group as an actor, a touring company which commissioned new writing. Then lots and lots of Theatre and TV and Radio. She returned to Lancaster in the late 80’s and has been in many shows here, becoming an Honorary patron in 2014.
Her plays BEST GIRL, RACE FOR LIFE and KIN have been seen at the Dukes, the Pleasance Edinburgh, Hull Truck, Theatr Clywd, Alnwick Playhouse, Queen’s Hexham and Hope Mill Theatre and HOME in Manchester. Christine will be appearing at the Dukes, 53 Two Manchester and Lawrence Batley, Huddersfield this spring in the premiere of A PINEAPPLE by Olivia Mace.
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