The Edinburgh International Film Festival has announced its 2026 winners, with Kieron J. Walsh’s Skintown taking home the £50,000 Sean Connery Prize for Feature Filmmaking Excellence and Sindha Agha’s Grief Room winning the £15,000 Thelma Schoonmaker Prize for Short Filmmaking Excellence. The awards were presented at a special ceremony at Edinburgh’s Cameo Cinema by Jason Connery on behalf of The Connery Foundation, bringing the 2026 festival to a close after seven days of screenings, premieres and events across the city.
Skintown Wins the Sean Connery Prize
Skintown was selected as the winner of the Sean Connery Prize following an audience vote, beating nine other feature-length world premieres in this year’s competition. The £50,000 award will go towards supporting director Kieron J. Walsh’s future projects.
Based on Ciaran McMenamin’s novel, with McMenamin also writing the screenplay, Skintown follows best friends Vinny and Jonty as they party, make deals and dream of escaping small-town life in Northern Ireland during the 1994 ceasefire. Jack Rowan and Chris Walley lead the cast, with the film combining friendship, humour and a distinctly ’90s soundtrack.
Grief Room Takes the Short Film Prize
Sindha Agha’s Grief Room won the Thelma Schoonmaker Prize for Short Filmmaking Excellence, also decided by an audience vote. The filmmaker receives £15,000 to support future work after competing against nine other world-premiere shorts. The film stars Emily Beecham, Daisy Bevan and Louisa Harland as estranged sisters who reunite at their mother’s deathbed, exploring the complicated emotions that come with grief and family.
EIFF 2026 Comes to a Close
Festival director Paul Ridd praised the standard of this year’s competition, describing Grief Room as a film filled with “wit, warmth and sadness” and Skintown as “beautiful, funny and very moving”.
The 2026 Edinburgh International Film Festival ran from 13 to 19 August, opening with the international premiere of Edinburgh filmmaker Louis Paxton’s debut feature The Incomer and closing with Louise Lockwood’s documentary Bel.
For CultureCues, it has been a brilliant week at EIFF. We attended screenings, premieres and interviews throughout the festival, with our review of Borges and Me already live and plenty more coverage still to come. We also sat down with filmmakers and cast during the week, so keep an eye on CultureCues for more reviews, features and interviews from EIFF 2026.
The Edinburgh International Film Festival will return in 2027.
Nikki Murray is a UK-based writer, screenwriter and founder & editor of CultureCues, covering film, television, music and pop culture. Her work focuses on storytelling and the moments shaping modern entertainment.