Eran Creevy, the writer/director behind Shifty and Welcome to the Punch, picked up the London Screenwriters’ Festival’s first British Screenwriter Award.

Upcoming writer/director Eran Creevy has been awarded the inaugural British Screenwriting Award by the London Screenwriters’ Festival.

Creevy’s low budget debut, Shifty, was critically acclaimed and his recent follow-up was Welcome to the Punch, starring James McAvoy and executive produced by Ridley Scott.

Basic Instinct screenwriter Joe Eszterhas presented the award (an ice-pick) and praised Creevy for his ‘writing talent, courage and chutzpah.

Creevy, who first got into the industry by working on Matthew Vaughn’s Layer Cake, is now in pre-production in his third feature, Autobahn.

Creevy said: “I am so honoured to be receiving the London Screenwriters’ Festival’s first screenwriting award and from Joe, a complete screenwriting legend and having him share his experience here with all of us filmmakers has been beyond words.”

Eszterhas spent the weekend with writers from film and television talking about the craft of writing screenplays and his experiences in film working with directors Paul Verhoeven, Richard Marquand and Costa-Gavras as well as a forensic separate script and screening session deconstructing 1992 thriller Basic Instinct.

Other prizes were awarded at The Pitch Factor pitching session to writer Phoebe Gibson for making the best pitch with her project One More Day and Tom Alexander who received the best project prize for Love Reset.

The festival, now in its fourth year, was attended by nore than 600 people including more than 100 speakers.

Held at the London School of Film, Media & Performance in Regent’s Park (Oct 25-27), festival sessions included the writers of films, TV shows and games including The Fall, Broadchurch, Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa, The Borgias, The Constant Gardener, Waking the Dead, Primeval, EastEnders and Skins as well as film writers David Hare, David Leland, Gurinder Chadha and Jeffrey Caine.