She was presented with the prize at the Sarajevo Film Festival by Charlotte Rampling, who curated this year’s award.

Egyptian director Hala Lotfy is this year’s recipient of the Katrin Cartlidge Foundation Award.

Lotfy was presented with the award and bursary by its curator Charlotte Rampling, at a gala ceremony held in Sarajevo’s National Theatre.

The directors’ credits include documentary On Feeling Cold, which picked up the Golden Hawke at the Rotterdam Arabic Film Festival in 2005 and her feature debut The Stroke, which she self financed. The project was put on hold but resumed after Egyptian uprisings this year and finished shooting a week ago.

She has pledged to use the bursary to complete the post production on the film.

The annual award is given by the Foundation, which was founded after Katrin Cartlidge’s death in 2002 to give new voices, perspectives and visions a chance to be seen and heard. A curator is appointed to choose the recipient of the award and to date curators have included Mike Leigh, Emily Watson, Stellan Skarsgard, Danis Tanovic, Simon McBurney, John Lyons and Juergen Teller.

In 2010, the Foundation gave the annual bursary to the new and only film school in Haiti, the Cine Institute Jacmel.