The London Film Award celebrates the creativity and dedication of filmmakers working in and visiting the city.

Winner: Submarine

Films that have been given the highest rating by reviewers are nominated to the competition list below. We encourage the smaller-budget, more independent features as the big movies are already taken care of.

With help in the judging process from:

Joe Bateman, Rushes Soho Shorts Festival Director
Kate Muir, Film Critic, The Times

Shortlist, click for link to review:

The 'snapshot' of Likes above was taken on Monday/Tuesday, July 4/5. For judging process, please see below.

Click on the title for a link to the original review.

Long list in competition - nominations: 11

London Film Award nomination Attack The Block

Evening Standard review: '.. has a lot of energy and momentum, like a happy cross between an early John Carpenter horror and Misfits. The young, mostly unknown cast - Moses is played impressively by John Boyega, 19, his first film role, although he's found others since - work together like a proper gang.'

Dir: Joe Cornish

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May 23

London Film Award nomination Oranges and Sunshine

Observer review: '..  a powerful, deeply moving, understated account of a major social injustice that went unreported for many years and only this past year received an official apology from the two governments involved, those of Great Britain and Australia.'

Dir: Jim Loach

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Apr 11

London Film Award nomination Route Irish

Mirror review: '.. he serves up a furious indictment of contractors making a killing in Iraq.. as a denunciation of the war, this is peerless.'

Dir: Ken Loach

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Mar 24

London Film Award nomination Submarine

Telegraph review: '.. feels like the most refreshing, urgent and original debut the British film industry has seen in years.'

Dir: Richard Ayoade

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Mar 15

London Film Award nomination Self Made

Time Out review: 'Documentary segues into drama, and the film is a lucid, concise précis of a project of great emotional intensity.'

Dir: Gillian Wearing

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Mar 11

London Film Award nomination Neds

ViewLondon review: 'Impressively directed and superbly written, this is a powerfully compelling coming-of-age story with a star-making central performance from young newcomer Conor McCarron.'

Dir: Peter Mullan

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Mar 10

London Film Award nomination Tamara Drewe

Guardian review: '.. a tremendously effective, forthright entertainment, and Frears and Buffini make their craftsmanship look easy, creating a soap-farce pastoral of Brit bourgeois out-of-towners.'

Dir: Stephen Frears

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Mar 10

London Film Award nomination Waste Land

Empire review: 'What emerges isn’t a wan-faced eco polemic, but a quietly powerful testament to the resilience of the poorest of souls.'

Dir: Lucy Walker

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Mar 10

London Film Award nomination Archipelago

Guardian review: '.. deeply intelligent new film from British director Joanna Hogg. There is something exacting and audacious in it, something superbly controlled in its composition and technique.'

Dir: Joanna Hogg

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Mar 05

The Judging Process

We wanted to include work by established as well as those not-so-established artists and performers (some awards leave out many worthy contenders). The Facebook and Twitter numbers is a way to do this without specifying criteria but using audience reaction (criteria would always be contentious). Using audience 'likes' allows for a more 'democratic' way to judging the award.

Human nature is a wonderful thing and it is possible that artists and performers will encourage others to 'like' their nominations to increase their number. This is why reviews are also part of the judging process.

We understood at the outset that it was likely that all judges will not have seen/read/heard all entries in their category. We had a choice, either to limit the number of nominations to what judges can be expected to see, or to be more inclusive and bring in those from the Fringe who don't have huge audiences and yet produce amazing work. We decided to be more inclusive.

With so many awards and nominations it would have been impossible to run on the basis that each judge will have seen every nomination in their category and to recognise and nominate great talent/performance when it is reviewed.

In any case all are in good company and all are worthy of winning the award.

There is no perfect judging process, however, the democratic part to the judging process, and the review commentary, as well as the judges' expert opinion, will together give us a fair and transparent process and a credible winner.

Each nomination below is based on a highly rated review in the national press. There is a Facebook and a Twitter button with a number of 'Likes' against each nomination. There are also a number of Likes on the original online review (there may be other online reviews but we can only take one into account). We shortlist nominations with the highest number of Likes from both pages and ask judges in each category to help decide the winner from the shortlist. Very occasionally there is a review that does not have the Facebook and Twitter buttons because the publication has not included them and so we have taken the numbers from the award page.

Note that the number of Facebook Likes on the award page is occasionally different from that on the the online review. It's probably because the original review page was changed (perhaps being updated) in some way after the nomination and Facebook starts counting again, so to account for this we only take the highest number.

We ask each judge to give us their top three in order of preference from the shortlist. We'll merge that with the other judge's preferences and that should give a clear winner. If not, a discussion between the judges should do so, and if there is yet no agreement, the London Awards Director will have casting vote.

All nominees are invited to the ceremony.