With three of the top awards at the 14th British Independent Film Awards, the dark drama Tyrannosaur was the big winner of the night, at the ceremony at Old Billingsgate.
It was voted the Best British Independent Film, with director Paddy Considine collecting the Douglas Hickox Award for the Best Debut Director and Olivia Colman taking the Best Actress prize.
The film’s star, Peter Mullan, was beaten to the Best Actor trophy by Michael Fassbender, for his role in Steve McQueen’s Shame, the latest in a run of high-profile performances from an actor whose recent and upcoming work has included films for Andrea Arnold, Cary Fukunaga, Matthew Vaughn, David Cronenberg and Steven Soderbergh.
Considine was pipped to the Best Director prize by Lynne Ramsay, whose We Need to Talk About Kevin won the London Star award for the best film of the London Film Festival.
The supporting actor honours went to Michael Smiley for Kill List and Vanessa Redgrave for Ralph Fiennes’ directorial debut, his adaptation of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus.
Best known as one of the stars of TV’s The IT Crowd, writer-director Richard Ayoade picked up the Best Screenplay award for his debut feature, Submarine, at the awards ceremony hosted by his TV co-star, Chris O’Dowd.
Asif Kapadia’s motor-racing biopic Senna missed out in the Best British Independent Film category, but won Best Documentary, while the highly-acclaimed low budget film Weekend picked up Best Achievement in Production and the Most Promising Newcomer, for one of its stars, Tom Cullen. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy won the award for Best Technical Achievement.
Iran’s A Separation, which picked up Berlin’s Golden Bear, was voted the Best Foreign Independent Film.
Ralph Fiennes and Kenneth Branagh were both honoured with awards that recognised their role in promoting British independent cinema.
The joint directors of the awards, Johanna von Fischer and Tessa Collinson, said those walking away with BIFAs were representative of the high quality of outstanding film-making talent in the UK.