Jonathan Glazer's Sexy Beast, Joel Hopkins' Jump Tomorrow and Richard Parry's South West Nine lead the nominations for the fourth British Independent Film Awards held in London on Oct 24.

Sexy Beast, one of the highlights of the recent resurrection of the British gangster genre, garnered a total of five nods, including best British independent film and best director. Sexy Beast's stars, Ray Winstone and Ben Kingsley, both received nominations in the best actor category.

Jump Tomorrow, produced by FilmFour's low-budget experimental division FilmFour Lab and South West Nine, from Human Traffic's Fruit Salad Films, also received five nominations, including best British independent film along with Sexy Beast and Ken Loach's Los Angeles-set Bread And Roses.

Also up for best director alongside Jonathan Glazer is Michael Winterbottom for The Claim, Ken Loach for Bread And Roses and Michael Apted for Enigma.

Debut directors nominated for the Douglas Hickox Award include Asif Kapadia for Edinburgh favourite The Warrior, Saul Metzstein for Late Night Shopping, Richard Parry for South West Nine and Joel Hopkins for Jump Tomorrow.

Nominations for best technical achievement go to The Warrior DoP Roman Osin, editor of Alone, Nick Lofting, Jany Temime, costume designer of High Heels And Low Lifes and Enigma's production designer John Beard.

Most promising newcomer nods go to Mark Letheren (South West Nine), Ingrid de Souza (Princesa), Ben Whishaw (My Brother Tom) and Natalia Verbeke (Jump Tomorrow).

Nominations for best English-language foreign film include Memento, Hedwig & The Angry Inch, Dark Days and Chopper. Best foreign language film nods go to Le Gout Des Autres, In The Mood For Love, Amores Perros and Songs From The Second Floor.

The awards jury includes Adrian Lester, Christopher Fowler, Pawel Pawlikowski, Paul Trijbits, Parminder Vir, Stephen Woolley and Stephen Frears.

Other awards include British producer of the year, the lifetime achievement award and the FilmFour special jury prize.