Grierson Awards 2015: nominations announced + number of women directors increases

The Grierson Trust have recently published the shortlist for the forthcoming Grierson Awards 2015. See the full shortlist.

Directors UK would like to offer our congratulations to all the directors nominated.

You may remember that following last year's awards we joined up with the Grierson Trust to co-host a panel session about the number of women directors receiving awards (you can watch a video of that session below). We therefore wanted to follow up on the story and have a look at the figures from this year to see how they stack up.

We're pleased to say that more women have been nominated this year than in 2014. In 2015, a total of 42 women directors have been nominated across the 11 award categories, as well as 2 women in the presenter category. That's in comparison to the 35 women directors nominated last year, with only 1 in the presenter category.

Some of the female nominees from this year co-directed alongside each other, so as a percentage 39.77% of the programmes nominated in 2015 have at least one female director (or 35 programmes out of the 88 nominations).

Lorraine Heggessey, Chairman of the Grierson Trust says: “I’m delighted to announce the shortlist for the 2015 Griersons. We have another amazingly strong year with each category jammed with a variety of powerful, impactful and memorable films. It’s brilliant to see such a range of channels involved with digital and children’s networks standing beside their mainstream counterparts. And I’m heartened by the diversity of list with more women being recognised both on and off-camera”.

We'll update this story when the final nominations and then the winners are announced later on in the year.