Beefeater gin announces Film Fest winner

Beefeater gin has crowned the winner of its amateur film-making competition which celebrated the brand, London and bartenders.

Beefeater #MyLondon Film Fest winner Jamie Sims, alongside his starring actress Charlotte Newton-John and Cinematographer Richard Dimery

Beefeater #MyLondon Film Fest winner Jamie Sims, alongside his starring actress Charlotte Newton-John and Cinematographer Richard Dimery

Entrants were tasked with creating a two to five minute film for the #MyLondon Film Fest competition that featured a unique representation of the capital city and a bartender creating a Beefeater gin-based cocktail.

A panel of judges that included Beefeater Gin master distiller Desmond Payne and film critic James King selected Jamie Sims as the winner, awarding the film graduate with £5,000 worth of filming equipment.

At the awards ceremony, which aired 12 of the 30 submitted shorts and served Beefeater Gin cocktails to attendees, Jamie Sims said: “I absolutely cannot believe this, this is incredible. I have just graduated from film school so this prize will be very useful.”

Sims’s short film, entitled ‘Unhappy Hour’, follows a Londoner throughout the course of a particularly unlucky day of stained shirts and failed romantic encounters.

Beefeater Gin launched the competition three months ago to ‘celebrate the unique character of the city’ through the ‘passion and flair of London’s brightest film-makers’.

Beefeater brand director, Paco Recuero, said at the time of the launch: “We want to inspire and provoke London’s creative talent, offering them a unique opportunity to collaborate with Beefeater to create an engaging film of London as they see it.

“We are providing access to some of the capital’s most successful bars and most influential bartenders in a bid to create some really unique content that will capture the imagination of the city.”

The #MyLondon initiative also featured a photography competition which invited British artists to create a hand-drawn illustration to feature on a new limited edition Beefeater 24.