Glorious Revolution wins at Hamptons Film Festival

Glorious Revolution, written and directed by London Film School (LFS) graduate Masha Novikova has won the Peter Macgregor-Scott Memorial Award at the Hamptons Film Festival.

Glorious Revolution is Masha’s graduate film and was developed in collaboration with her classmates, co-written by Matthew McHaffie, cinematography by Pablo Garrido Carreras, and co-produced by Paisley Valentine Walsh.

The Peter Macgregor-Scott Memorial Award aims to “continue the celebrated producer’s mentorship for a new generation of passionate filmmakers” and has been created to “recognise narrative short filmmakers and reward creative approaches to solving practical production challenges in the service of storytelling”. Sponsored by Susan Macgregor Scott, the $10,000 prize is the largest of all the cash prize awards at the Hamptons Film Festival.

The film is set in 2014, at the height of the Ukrainian revolution, and depicts a mother whose son has been killed while protesting in Independence Square. Her attempt to bury him as a hero clashes with a corrupt bureaucratic system, testing her view of Ukraine.

The win at Hampton Film Festival follows an incredibly successful festival run for the LFS film including third prize at the La Cinef in Cannes (Cinéfondation) earlier this year.

Masha comments, “During the 2014 revolution, I heard a story about Serhiy Bondarev, who was killed on the first day of protests, and of his mother who struggled to bury him, faced with red tape everywhere. The 2014 Revolution of Dignity greatly influenced the self-consciousness of people, including me, it showed the possibility and the way of fight. This idea is embodied in my film through the character of a mother who has lost everything, her son, shelter, and income, but she continues her fight.”

Masha was born and raised in in Kyiv, and travelled and studied at London Film School, graduating in 2021, with an MA in Filmmaking. She is an Erwin and Gisela von Steiner Foundation grant recipient, an Oskar-Karl-Forster scholarship holder, and was selected for Ildikó Enyedi’s directing workshop with her upcoming short film Maria’s Lovers. The forthcoming short is an autobiographical tragicomedy with further details to be released shortly.