Creative firms based in and around Bristol dominate the list of contenders for this year’s Panda Awards – the ‘green Oscars’ staged in the city as part of the annual Wildscreen festival.
The awards, which take place at Colston Hall on Thursday, recognise excellence in wildlife film and TV and are viewed as the industry’s highest accolades. 
The shortlist names productions from 10 countries, each gaining their place after a sifting of nearly 900 entries by a judging panel made up of leading international producers and broadcasters, conservation organisations, and top craft professionals.
But while the awards – like the Wildscreen festival itself – are international in outlook, more than a third of the nominees are the work of companies based in or around Bristol.
These include the titles with the most award nominations: landmark BBC One series The Hunt, by Bristol-based Silverback Films.
Silverback also tops the list of production companies with the most nominations, with eight – just ahead of the BBC’s Bristol-based Natural History Unit, with seven.
The Bristol-made contenders are:
AGB Films
My Life: Penguin Post Office – a mini-film made for CBBC and starring the Somerset-based young daughters of film-maker Andrew Graham Brown
Ammonite
India’s Wandering Lions
David Attenborough’s Light on Earth
BBC Natural History Unit
Attenborough and the Giant Dinosaur
Big Blue Live – featuring award ceremony hosts Steve Backshall and Liz Bonnin)
Life Story
Tribes, Predators and Me
Wild and Weird
Wonders of the Monsoon
Crazy Ape
Monkey Kingdom
Icon
Africa’s Fishing Lions
Silverback
Disneynature: Bears
The Hunt
Tigress
John Bishop’s Gorilla Adventure
Underdog/James Reed
Jago: A Life Underwater
In addition, Bristol-based Matt Meech is in the running for the Editing Award for his work on The Hunt, and William Goodchild, also based in Bristol, has been nominated for the Music Award for the score he composed for Jago: A Life Underwater.
David Attenborough, who celebrates his 90th birthday this year, presents or narrates six of the nominated films, including all three of the documentaries vying for the Science Award.
Wildscreen is the world’s biggest festival of natural history storytelling,
But while it attracts interest from major film companies, Wildscreen CEO Lucie Muir points out that a much higher proportion of small independents have made it on to the shortlist this year – “proving that it doesn’t require a big budget or long track record to tell truly inspiring, brave, bold and beautiful stories”.
In all, 43 titles are in the running for prizes in the festival’s 20 categories. Principal sponsors of the Wildscreen Festival 2016, which started today and runs until Friday, are BBC Earth, BBC Worldwide and Disneynature.
