Gonville & Caius College student Zebulon Goriely (Computational Linguistics PhD 2021) won the Best Micro Short Award at the British Film Institute Future Film Festival 2024.

The BFI event is a festival for aspiring filmmakers aged 16 to 25, and was held from February 15 to 18 in-venue at BFI Southbank, online globally for free, and for the first time in cinemas UK-wide, showing 55 short films from all over the world.

Zeb’s film 36,000 words for love “is an experimental film documenting a weekend spent at the filmmaker’s home, using nothing but a microphone and a vintage film camera”, the BFI adds. Zeb’s film can be watched on his YouTube channel (and below).

Zeb says: “To have something so simple and experimental recognised at such a prestigious festival for emerging filmmakers is incredibly validating and it’s inspired me to keep going along this path.

“I had a fantastic time at the festival and appreciated the chance to meet and network with fellow selected filmmakers and the BFI Film Academy Young Programmers, all of whom were incredibly friendly and welcoming.

“Besides being screened on NFT1 at BFI Southbank, the film was also selected to screen at the Glasgow Film Theatre and Watershed, Bristol as part of this year's first-ever UK-wide programme.

“Thank you to the BFI Film Academy and Chapman Charitable Trust for this wonderful award. Hopefully, I can come back next year with another short!”