Sean Connery Talent Lab debuts at Edinburgh Festival

The Herald Scotland

6 hours ago

This year, the foundation premiered one of its most ambitious projects to date. In doing so, it gave a hand to two groups close to the late actor's heart: emerging talent and the Edinburgh International Film Festival (EIFF).
The Sean Connery Talent Lab is a 12-month programme for writers, directors, producers, cinematographers and editors delivered in partnership with the National Film and Television School (NFTS).
The lab accepts Scottish and UK national students from across the disciplines, and they come together to form six filmmaking teams. Each receives a £25,000 production budget and access to the NFTS's equipment and facilities.
At the 2025 EIFF, the first cohort of filmmaking teams debuted their films in front of audiences.
Jason Wardle, NFTS Director, said that the range of styles and narratives on display showcased the importance of connecting emerging talents with the resources they need to bring their stories to the big screen.
"From the gritty tension of Gowk to the haunting surrealism of Nora Can't Score, the powerful Isle of Skye-set Lady MacLean, the raw reflections of the pandemic in Twenty Twenty, the quiet intensity of Static, and the darkly comic brilliance of Checkout, each film showcases the talent and dedication of 26 unique voices."
The first cohort of the Sean Connery Talent Lab premiered their projects at the 2025 Edinburgh International Film Festival. (Image: Kat Gollock)
Writer and director Miranda Stern, whose film "Static" debuted at the EIFF, said that the talent lab not only gave her a degree of resources that she had never worked with before, but it also threw her completely out of her comfort zone.
As a natural documentarian, she said that she has spent most of her time as a filmmaker solo. Learning to work with a crew, making sure everyone was "telling the same story", and being the guiding vision for that story was an entirely new experience.
And she loved it.
"There's no road map, there's no paint-by-numbers way to make a film," she said. Having access to the resources and mentors available through the NFTS and talent was like having "handholds in the dark", which she said is crucial in a project, particularly when it can be such a financial and creative risk to the uninitiated.
"There's something brilliant in the alchemy of people coming together to make a film."
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Ryan Pollock is one of the many Scottish filmmakers in the first cohort of the Sean Connery Talent Lab, and he said that he was incredibly grateful for the resources the partnership provided and the opportunity it gave him to shine a light on a part of the world that matters to him, but is unlikely to have been seen by many on screen.
"My film is based on a true story from my dad's youth, about a young boy who starts to unravel a secret within his family, but isn't quite able to understand what he's finding.
"It's set in the real scheme where it happened and my dad grew up, Gowkthrapple, in Wishaw.
"The main character, the lead, we found a boy at my old school, a boy called Jack Maven, who was just tremendous.
Ryan Pollok was proud to bring his corner of Scotland to the big screen thanks to the opportunities made available by the NFTS and the Sean Connery Talent Lab. (Image: Pako Mera)
Jason Connery, Sir Connery's son, said that the Foundation was established in part to support filmmaking in Scotland. It has played a crucial role in growing the EIFF since its brief hiatus in 2021, particularly by sponsoring the £50,000 Sean Connery Prize for Filmmaking Excellence.
Jason said that the talent lab and the culture around the EIFF exemplify what he thinks his father envisioned when he set aside some of his fortune before he died.
"All of the filmmakers have one thing in common – they are really talented and just needed help getting to that next stage.
"The thing with Dad, he very much wanted to help people who were talented but just didn't have the resources. Not people who were thinking of giving filmmaking a try.
"There are many programmes for people to learn and understand, and perhaps decide later whether they really want to do it as a vocation. Whereas Dad was very much about people who really want it.
"If we can give access to those talents, then in the long term we can create a pipeline of talented Scots artists who don't always feel they need to leave to get the help they need."
Jason said that he was happy to see so many Scots like Ryan in the first cohort, and many more in the lab's second group, which was also announced at the festival.