A TALENTED York schoolgirl is rapidly becoming one to watch in the film industry.

Ava Bounds, 15, a pupil at St Peter’s School, has already received a clutch of awards for her film making.

She made her experimental Sci-Fi film Players with the help of her Huby neighbours who came along as cast members, just after the first lockdown. This film went on to win awards globally, most notably the Youth Award at the BAFTA qualifying, Bolton film Festival along with a nomination for IMDb best new filmmaker 2020.

Her second film Beth was more ambitious. Filmed in August 2020, this film centred around the true story of a Victorian asylum escapee. It has just won the Youth Award of the Academy Award Qualifying Indy Short Fest in the USA, along with other Awards such as best cinematography.

Finally in April this year, Ava shot Hello Frisco- a surreal road movie pitting four teens against the elements to save a life. This has already won two awards for best student film and best cinematography.

Ava said: “The concept of Hello Frisco came to me as I was thinking about what fun it could be coming out of Covid Lockdown. 2020/2021 was a long, dark year and I thought ‘What the hell’, I’ll take this absurd idea, grab some actors and shoot it in one day. And it worked.”

Ava began her performance career aged just 12, working with Sam Mendes in his West End hit The Ferryman. Often working from creative mind-pops, Ava is a natural advocate of the Theatre of Cruelty, as she loves nothing more than to startle her audience’s senses with light, sound, dreamlike sequences and shocking endings.

Ava says that she is contacted a lot by young film makers asking how they can get started, she says the best advice she can give is “just make films, not everybody will like them, but that’s art”.

Ava is currently in pre-production for her new film, ‘Dying to Meet You’ - another period piece based in mid-West American in 1936 but being shot at the Crown Hotel, Harrogate. After this, she says that she’ll need to concentrate on here GCSE’s.