We are proud to announce the winner the LoCo Discovery award to be screened at the first London Comedy Film Festival, at the BFI Southbank, Saturday January 28th.

Winner: Black Pond

“An ordinary family is accused of murder when a stranger dies at their dinner table.”

Dir: Will Sharpe, Tom Kingsley

Tom Kingsley and Will Sharpe, directors, said:

“It’s great to win the first ever LoCo Discovery award. Film festivals don’t always treat comedy films as kindly as they do straightforward dramas, so it’s great that there’s now a film festival that recognises the importance of comedy to the exclusion of everything else. Awards such as this offer invaluable support for low budget films like ours. The two of us double-handedly organised Black Pond’s distribution, so it’s a nice change to be invited to a cinema, rather than having to wage a protracted phone campaign where we target small independent cinemas and insist they screen our film. Our DVD release will give the film a much wider audience, but we think the best place to watch comedy films is in the cinema.

We couldn’t have made the film without the hard work and support of our extremely talented cast and crew. In particular, the film would not have been half as brilliant as it is without the magnificent performances of Chris Langham, Amanda Hadingue, Colin Hurley, Anna O’Grady, Helen Cripps and Simon Amstell.”

Thank you to everyone that entered. We received such a diversity of films from a wide range of filmmakers, demonstrating the bright future for British comedy film talent.

Here are the two excellent runners up. All the shortlisted filmmakers can feel very proud of their work and we look forward to seeing where their careers take them. The winner will be announced w/c Monday 16th January.

Runner up: Pulp

“A comedy about comics.”
A struggling comic book writer finds himself in over his head when he agrees to help with a police hunt.

Dir: Adam Hamdy, Shaun Magher

Runner up: Weekend Retreat

“Get away from it all. Relax. Survive.”
A black comedy about a couple in crisis who find more problems than they solve when they decide to spend the weekend in a country house retreat.

Dir: Brett Harvey

One of our core objectives at LoCo is to help kickstart the careers of new British comedy filmmakers, so to celebrate and highlight new talent we created the annual LoCo Discovery Award for new British comedy films without distribution.

Find out more at LoCoFilmFestival.com