Director Finlay Pretsell is an award-winning filmmaker who once set out on the long road to becoming a professional cyclist, riding for a few national teams and representing Scotland a number of times.
Finlay’s breakthrough as a filmmaker was in 2007 with Standing Start, a short film which followed his passion for cycling (shortlisted for Grierson Newcomer Award), taking a unique look at the world of track cycling featuring world champion Craig Maclean.
He followed up that success with several more short films, winning Scotland’s top prize, a BAFTA for Ma Bar, which was shown at the prestigious Sundance Film festival and over 50 other international film festivals, and Cutting Loose, which was financed by the UK Film Council and BBC. The film won a raft of awards including Best Documentary at Encounters FF and the Grand Jury prize at Asterfest, and qualified for Oscar nomination after a theatrical run in New York in 2012.
Most recently Finlay produced Norfolk (2015), a feature film directed by longstanding collaborator Martin Radich starring Denis Menochet (Inglorious Basterds) and financed through BBC Films, BFI and Creative England. It premiered at IFFR 2015 and was nominated for the Michael Powell Award at EIFF 2015.
Finlay has been an integral part of Scottish Documentary Institute since 2005.
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