Daryl Chase’s “Macbeth” won Best U.K. Feature at this year’s Raindance Film Festival, with Marie-Elsa Sgualdo’s “Silent Rebellion” winning Best International Feature, Katie Camosy’s “Gaslit” winning Best Documentary Feature and Rob Alicea’s “Serena” taking home the festival’s inaugural Best Horror Feature award. Winners of the festival’s 34th edition were announced this Friday ahead of the closing night screening of “Eddie Cochran: Don’t Forget Me,” which won a Best U.K. Director for filmmaker Kirsty Bell.
Adapted from Shakespeare’s classic, “Macbeth” spins the famed story of the titular king in a film “brought to life via a social enterprise production, tackling barriers to filmmaking,” while World War II drama “Silent Rebellion” “follows a virtuous teen in 1943 Switzerland who questions her village’s morality when they turn away French refugees.” Camosy’s “Gaslit” trails icon Jane Fonda as she travels across the oil fields of West Texas’ Permian Basin and through the Gulf Coast of Louisiana, visiting the communities impacted by oil and gas production. Horror winner “Serena” tackles AI anxiety through the story of a down-on-his-luck musician tasked with testing an increasingly dangerous chatbot.
Anooya Swamy’s “Pankaja,” Liane Aviram and Louis Hollis’ “The Oath” and Jocelyn Charles’s “God is Shy” are now all eligible for Academy Award consideration after winning the respective Oscar-qualifying awards at Raindance: Best Live Action Short, Best Documentary Short and Best Animation Short. Still on the short film front, Róisín Burns’s “Wonderwall” was awarded Best UK Short. The festival is also BIFA-qualifying for British features.
The 34th edition of Raindance opened on June 17 with the U.K. premiere of Michel K. Parandi’s sci-fi thriller “April X,” starring “Heated Rivalry” breakout Connor Storrie. On top of the competitive awards, the festival also presented a series of Icon Awards to renowned actors Brian Cox and Myriam Margolyes, American film director and co-founder of Troma Entertainment film studio Lloyd Kaufman and a posthumous award to American rock legend Eddie Cochran. Presented to Eddie’s sister and niece, the Icon Award is set to be displayed alongside his original Gretsch guitar and his other trophies at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio. Cochran is the subject of the festival’s closing film, Kirsty Bell’s “Eddie Cochran: Don’t Forget Me.”
“Gaslit” (Courtesy of Raindance Film Festival)
Courtesy of Raindance Film Festival
This year’s jury included actors Adriana Paz (“Emilia Pérez”), Charlotte Hope (“The Nun”), Jacob Anderson (“Game of Thrones”), Sope Dirisu (“My Father’s Shadow”), Eva Birthistle (“Bad Sisters”) and Jonathan Rhys Meyers (“The Tudors”) as well as filmmakers Lee Knight (“A Friend of Dorothy”), Chris Overton (“The Silent Child”) and Jamie Donoughue (“Shok”). Other jury members include BAFTA-winning producer Fiona Lamptey, Jinga Films founder Julian Richards, Tigerlily Productions co-founder Natasha Dack Ojumu, and head of development at Marauder Pictures, Maxine Gordon.
Raindance presented 85 narrative and documentary features in its 2026 edition, as well as 112 short films and 27 immersive projects. Forty-eight of the features – 56% of the total – come from first-time directors.
Full list of winners below:
Best International Feature: “Silent Rebellion,” dir. Marie-Elsa Sgualdo
Best Documentary Feature: “Gaslit,” dir. Katie Camosy
Discovery Award for Best Debut Feature (the Elisar Cabrera Award): “Thanks for Nothing,” dir. Stella Marie Markert
Best Debut Director: Nina Paninnguaq Skydsbjerg and Sofie Rørdam for “Walls – Akinni Inuk”
Best Performance in a Debut Feature: Lila Gueneau, “Silent Rebellion”
Best Horror Feature (the Roger Corman Award): “Serena,” dir. Rob Alicea
Best U.K. Feature: “Macbeth,” dir. Daryl Chase
Best Director of a U.K. Feature: Kirsty Bell, “Eddie Cochran: Don’t Forget Me”
Best Performance in a U.K. Feature: Izabella Malewska, “Tramp”
Best U.K. Cinematography: Dan Poole, “Section 1591 – Sex Trafficking of Children in the U.S.A.”
Spirit of Raindance Award (the Philip Gambrill Award): “So What,” dir. Blake Inniss
Best Live Action Short: “Pankaja,” dir. Anooya Swamy
Best Documentary Short: “The Oath,” dir. Liane Aviram Louis Hollis
Best Animation Short: “God is Shy,” dir. Jocelyn Charles
Best U.K. Short: “Wonderwall,” dir. Róisín Burns
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