Dr Agnieszka Piotrowska, a BBC trained-award winning documentary filmmaker and Course Leader for the University’s MA Creative Digital Film Production, film Lovers in Time or How We Didn’t get Arrested in Harare! won Best Screenplay at the 4^th Mumbai Shorts Festival last month.

The film, which was previously nominated for Best Documentary in the Zimbabwe International Festival of the Arts, was written and directed by Dr Piotrowska and co-produced with Joe Njagu, one of Zimbabwe’s premier filmmakers.

It was also nominated for Best Feature at the Out of Africa Film Festival in Kenya in November 2015 and screened at the Political Film Festival in London.

The work of Dr Piotrowska and Mr Njagu is an example of the University's commitment to enabling international collaborations. Dr Piotrowska is also the Reader in Film Practice and Theory at the Media Arts and Production Department at the University.

Upon hearing that she has won the award Dr Piotrowska said: “It is amazing that the film is beginning to travel internationally and gain recognition, given its challenging history.”

The film, about a controversial interracial relationship, was previewed in the UK last year and subsequently praised by Thomas Elsaesser, a noted international film historian and professor.

“As with the films Jacques Rivette and Eric Rohmer that so often sparkle with Gallic wit, Lovers in Time modulates its moods quite masterfully between humour and tragedy, real danger and farce.

“It finally leaves the viewer more pensive and thoughtful, but also more positive and hopeful than had the director opted for a racially less entangled and politically more correct “film of the play”, he continued.

Dr Piotrowska’s monograph on Zimbabwe and its art is due to be published by Routledge in 2016.