A TALENTED York schoolgirl has won another award for her film-making.

As previously reported by The Press, Ava Bounds, 15, a pupil at St Peter’s School, has already received a clutch of awards for her film making.

Ava was invited to New York as her film, Beth, was nominated for best film at the All American High School Film Festival - the largest film competition in the USA for school students.

Out of 2,500 films, Beth won Best International Film. Ava was also nominated for Best Director, Best Drama and Best Overall Film.

Filmed in August 2020, Beth centres around the true story of a Victorian asylum escapee. It has also previously won the Youth Award of the Academy Award Qualifying Indy Short Fest in the USA, along with other awards such as best cinematography.

Ava made her first 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.

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”.