Columbia Film Captures BAFTA Student Award for Second Year in a Row

June 29, 2017

Jimmy Keyrouz, an alumnus of the Columbia Film Program, won the 2017 BAFTA Student Film award in the Live Action category for his film Nocturne in Black. The awards were presented at a ceremony in downtown Los Angeles on June 23.

Nocturne in Black, which was produced by fellow alumna Felecia Hunter, tells of a musician living in the Middle East who attempts to reconstruct his piano after it is damaged by jihadists. The film was one of five films chosen for the Jury Selects lineup at the 2016 Columbia University Film Festival (CUFF). It has also received a National Board of Review Student Grant, a Caucus Foundation production grant, the 2016 Marion Carter Green Award, and was a Student Academy Award semi-finalist. (Read an interview with Keyrouz about the film here.)

Fellow Film Program alumna Mounia Akl ’17 was nominated in the Live Action category for her film Submarine, which showed at Cannes this spring.

This is the second year in a row in which Columbia made a strong showing at the student BAFTAs. In 2016, alumna Clara Roquet won the US Student Film Award (as it was then known) for her film El Adiós.