Abdolreza Kahani’s ‘Mortician’ Takes Top Prize At Edinburgh 

Abdolreza Kahani’s Mortician has won the Sean Connery Prize for Feature Filmmaking Excellence, the top prize at the Edinburgh Film Festival. 

The award comes with a £50,000 cash prize and is decided by an audience vote. 

The film follows a reclusive mortician who faces an unusual request from a dissident singer in hiding. Mortician was among ten features presented in Competition at EIFF. 

Elsewhere, the winner of the Thelma Schoonmaker Prize for Short Filmmaking Excellence Competition was Joanna Vymeris’s Mother Goose. The short film competition winner was also decided on by an audience vote and comes with a £15,000 cash prize. 

The short’s synopsis reads: After the death of her husband, Janet decides to distract herself by rearing a goose, which is to be the centrepiece of her Christmas dinner. However, as she grows ever more isolated from her daughter, Janet’s need to nurture the goose becomes an obsession: one which will cost her dearly. A modern-day Grimm’s fairy tale about grief, isolation, and a goose.

EIFF ended this evening, and was Paul Ridd’s second edition in charge. Speaking about the edition, he said: “As the 2025 Edinburgh International Film Festival draws to a close, I am once again moved and humbled by the hard work and astonishing effort that everyone has put into making this Festival stimulating, entertaining, and fun. I am so grateful to all the organisations, teams, and individuals who put their hearts and souls into this. 

He added: “I am hugely inspired by all the filmmakers in Competition and beyond, as well as all our special guests, who have worked so brilliantly with us to platform their work on the big screen and have been so generous with their time with audiences and with the industry, who we know very well are hungry for something fresh and exciting. I cannot wait for 2026.”