The NFTS was delighted to welcome back NFTS graduate, writer-director Michael Pearce for a Masterclass on his acclaimed film, Beast – for which he won the BAFTA for Outstanding Debut.  The New York Times said “Mr. Pearce has created a feverish fairy tale riven with dark horrors and forbidden desires.”  Mark Kermode praised the way “Pearce's increasingly intense psychological thriller deftly overturns expectations as it dances between timeless fable, modern romance and murder mystery.”

NFTS Producing MA graduate and BAFTA (Scotland) winning producer Annalise Davis (The Railway Man, Up There), writer Abigail Burdess (Tracey Ullman's Show) and director and NFTS Co-Head of Fiction and NFTS alumna, Lesley Manning (Ghost Watch) along with fellow NFTS graduates, Molly Manning Walker (DoP) and Mdhamiri Nkemi (Editor) and NFTS students, James Bowsher and Amy Vearncombe have created a short film called Seven to highlight the effects of climate change.

The nominations have been announced for this year’s Royal Television Society Programme Awards and two programmes directed by NFTS alumni – Derry Girls directed by Michael Lennox and Black Mirror: USS Callister directed by Toby Haynes - are up for ‘Best Scripted Comedy’ and ‘Best Single Drama’ respectively.

StoryFutures Academy, the National Centre for Immersive Storytelling jointly run by the National Film and Television School (NFTS) and Royal Holloway, University of London, announces that its first co-funded immersive production, Common Ground, directed, produced and written by Darren Emerson has been selected for the Tribeca Film Festival. Common Ground can be experienced at the Festival’s Virtual Arcade, presented by AT&T which takes place between April 26th to May 4th 2019 in New York.