Duncan Cowles is a BAFTA Scotland Award winning documentary filmmaker whose short films The Lady with the Lamp, Soft Toffee, Radio Silence, Directed by Tweedie & Isabella have been selected for various film festivals at home and internationally winning a selection of awards, and gaining thousands of online views.

Duncan graduated from Edinburgh College of Art with a 1st Class degree and a specialisation in documentary film directing, winning both the Audience Award and an Award for Distinguished work by the University at his graduation.

The Lady with the Lamp, Duncan’s first short film played at many festivals such as Glasgow Short Film Festival, The Smalls, London Short Film Festival, East End Film Festival and more before going on to receive over 300,000 views overnight upon premiering online.

Duncan was then nominated for a BAFTA Scotland New Talent Award in 2014 for his graduation film Radio Silence. Which also toured internationally and went on to be staff picked on Vimeo receiving 35,000 views in it’s first 24hours online.

His 2014 film, Directed by Tweedie, commissioned by Creative Scotland, premiered at Edinburgh International Film Festival in June 2014. The film has since gone on to be shown at festivals such as ZagrebDox, Seville European Film Festival, Hot Springs Doc Fest, Future Shorts and more, as well as winning Best Scottish Short Film at Glasgow Short Film Festival, being shortlisted for a Channel 4 Innovation in Storytelling Award and nominated for Best British Short at the London Critics Circle Awards 2016.

Now helping out on a freelance basis, Duncan previously worked for almost three years full-time at the international recognised documentary research centre Scottish Documentary Institute as their Technical and Marketing Co-ordinator, assisting in training, production and distribution of their award winning documentary films such as I am Breathing, Future My Love, Pablo’s Winter, Seven Songs for a Long Life and the upcoming David Millar Project, Donkeyote, Becoming Animal & Nae Pasaran.

Now alongside assisting with the programming of feature documentaries for the Edinburgh Int. Film Festival, Duncan has recently finished his second Creative Scotland commission with BAFTA Scotland nominated animator Ross Hogg called Isabella, and is now developing his first longer documentary feature project (supported by the BFI, Creative Scotland & Scottish Documentary Institute), alongside a slate of new shorts.

Isabella had its World Premiere at the 2016 London Short Film Festival where it was nominated for Best Documentary, and its N. American premiere at Big Sky Documentary Film Festival, before going on to win the BFI Best UK short Film (19-25) & the BFI Raw Award at the BFI Future Film Festival in February 2016. The film then won Duncan the Scottish Jury Award for a second year in a row at Glasgow Short Film Festival 2016 and the Audience Award at Hamburg International Short Film Festival. At the end of 2016, Isabella won a BAFTA Scotland Award for Best Short Film 2016.

In addition to his personal work Duncan has worked on commercial photography projects such as weddings, graduations and portraits, and directed and edited corporate videos for clients such as Toys R Us, Graham’s Dairy, QueryClick, IQ Chocolate, Uniform Dating, YourGP, TeamSky, Refugee Survival Trust, Code-Clan, Media Gang, Africa in Motion, Deep Casing Tools, R&A, QAA and more…

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