Documentary filmmaker Kevin Macdonald to be awarded Grierson Trustees’ Award

The Grierson Trust has announced that Oscar-winning filmmaker Kevin Macdonald will be the 2012 recipient of the prestigious Coutts Grierson Trustees’ Award at their awards ceremony at the Empire Leicester Square on 6 November.

The Trustees’ Award recognises outstanding contribution to the art or craft of documentary making. Previous winners include luminaries John Pilger, Penny Woolcock, Norma Percy, Paul Watson, Mike Salisbury, Nick Fraser, Jonathan Gili, Molly Dineen and Sir David Attenborough.

Announcing the award, chairman of the Grierson Trust, Dawn Airey said: “Being recognised by one’s peers is an enormous accolade and we are delighted that the work of this talented filmmaker is being acknowledged with the highly coveted Trustees’ Award. Kevin’s first theatrical film release won him an Oscar, and he has continued to deliver remarkable and award-winning films.”

Kevin Macdonald won an Oscar for Best Feature Documentary in 2000 for his film One Day in September. Touching the Void won Kevin his second BAFTA and an Evening Standard Film Award for Best British Film. His subsequent feature documentaries include the crowdsourced documentary Life in a Day and the highly acclaimed profile documentary Marley. He was also executive producer of Britain in a Day and Senna – which became the biggest box office hit for a documentary in the UK. Kevin is the co-editor of Imagining Reality: The Faber Book of Documentaries and is currently working on the film adaptation of Meg Rosoff’s novel How I Live Now for release in 2013.

The most prestigious awards in the documentary world and in their 40th anniversary year, the Grierson Awards celebrate the best in documentary filmmaking carrying prestige and allure for factual film-makers from across the globe. The full list of nominees for this year’s awards can be found here.