Zillah Bowes

Zillah is a Welsh/English writer, director and artist. Her short fiction film STAYING / AROS MAE won the Grand Jury Prize at Premiers Plans Angers Film Festival and Special Mention at Encounters Film Festival in 2021, and screened internationally including Palm Springs ShortFest. Her short film ALLOWED premiered at Edinburgh International Film Festival, won the Jury's Stellar Award at Thomas Edison Film Festival and was listed for the Aesthetica Art Prize in 2022. She is currently developing her first fiction feature film with Sixteen Films and Ffilm Cymru Wales.

Zillah trained at the National Film and Television School (NFTS) before working as a cinematographer, then as a director. Her debut as a director SMALL PROTESTS was nominated for a Grierson Award and won the Current Short Cuts Vimeo Award and Best Short Documentary at the London Independent Film Festival. As a cinematographer, her feature films include ENEMIES OF HAPPINESS, which won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance Film Festival.

She was a winner of the British Journal of Photography (BJP) International Photography Award in 2022 and also won in the BJP Edition 365 Awards in 2021 and International Photography Awards in 2020. She won the National Museum Wales Purchase Prize in 2022. For her writing, she has won the Wordsworth Trust Prize, a Creative Wales Award and a Literature Matters Award from the Royal Society of Literature. Zillah has taught at the NFTS and several other institutions as well as the LFS.