Bart Gavigan is our Festival Head Juror. He  is a graduate of the UK’s National Film School.  His student feature CHILDREN AT THE GATE premiered in the BFI’s ‘British Cinema Now’. His screenwriting credits include LUTHER, starring Joe Fiennes, Peter Ustinov, and Bruno Ganz; the award winning END OF THE SPEAR, which opened in the US Top Six and was among the 10 most seen films in the US in 2006; and THE JOURNEY HOME with Goran Visnjic and Dakota Goyo.  He co-directed CHRISTMAS CHILD, which premiered on Lifetime and scored the biggest audience in the network’s history. He has also directed and produced multiple Specials for the BBC.  His short film “Mouth of Hell” was BAFTA nominated.

Bart is an internationally renowned script doctor, who runs the Script Accelerator Screenplay Clinics and gives master classes all over the world. He’s served as Script Advisor to Robert Redford’s Sundance Institute, Equinoxe in Europe, and British Screen. He was External Examiner to the Northern Film School/Leeds Beckett BA and MA Screenwriting Courses. In VR he’s twice won the prestigious Lumiere Award – in 2020 for the short film “Enter The Tomb” which is embedded in the Tutankhamun Global Tour. Bart co-founded the charity SPCT and the Triptych Film Music Library run by BMG.  He co-owned 1A Productions for 25 years with double Emmy and Bafta winning director Norman Stone. Current film partners include former Pixar story guru Matthew Luhn and River Road’s Richie Adams, who is currently in pre-production on his second feature film “The Road Dance”.