Scripts involving AsifKapadia, Sarah Gavron and Christopher Smith, director of current UK horror hit Creep,have won funding from Government-backed support body the UK Film Council.

Kapadia, who won two BAFTAawards in 2003 for his directorial debut The Warrior, is developing Bushidowith £27,500 from the council's development fund. Jeremy Bolt and Paul WSAnderson are producing the samurai story with Clabe Hartley.

Smith has secured £27,750for Severance, another horror which is being developed by Qwerty Filmsand Creep producer Jason Newmark of Dan Films. Gavron will direct TheEndless Steppe, the story of a girl exiled to Siberia in 1941 with herPolish family. She is also attached to direct an adaptation of Miriam Toews'novel A Complicated Kindness.

Rounding out the latestbatch of awards are Nanny, a contemporary drama written byOscar-nominated writer Braulio Mantovani, Bille Eltringham's teen chiller TheNight Country and Le Docteur Chinois (The Chinese Doctor), a darklycomic thriller to be written and directed by Simon Shore. William Osborne'sinternational action adventure story Knight And Bishop received £100,000.