The Film London Jarman Award has announced its shortlist for 2026, featuring only four artist film-makers: Sadia Pineda Hameed, Ilona Sagar, Rhea Storr, and Alia Syed. The £10,000 prize recognizes British artists creating groundbreaking moving-image work, and this year's nominees draw from historical sources to envision the future.
Shortlisted Artists and Their Works
Filipino Pakistani artist Sadia Pineda Hameed, based in the Ebbw valley, Wales, presents Anak Where Did We Stay?, a five-channel film blending family camcorder footage with archive material on Beatlemania and anti-Enoch Powell protests. It incorporates aeroplane and road travel to narrate her mother's migration from the Philippines to Britain, engaging in dialogue with Joshua Reynolds' 1776 painting Portrait of Omai.
Alia Syed, born in Swansea and working between London and Glasgow, has 40 years of experimental film-making. Her 2019 work Snow is a video diary using footage shot by her father on a snowy day in winter 1995/6, a time when they were not speaking.
Rhea Storr explores her Bahamian-British heritage in New Territories (Spectacle Is King) (2025), focusing on UK summer carnivals. The film's lack of sound highlights the contrast between vibrant costumes—dancers in blue facepaint and stilts—and mundane high streets, responding to Isaac Julien's 1984 documentary Territories.
Ilona Sagar's The Body Blow (2022) takes its name from a 1962 radio ballad by Ewan MacColl, Peggy Seeger, and Charles Parker. While that work combined folk songs with polio survivor recordings, Sagar's two-channel film examines asbestos and mesothelioma-related illnesses in Barking and Dagenham.
Jury Statement and Prize History
The jury, including last year's shortlisted artist Hope Pearl Strickland, stated: “The shortlisted artists possess a confident and singular way of seeing the world… Their outstanding works are deeply grounded in lived experience and in-depth research.” Named after radical film-maker Derek Jarman, the prize has a history of spotting talent; previous shortlistees include Turner Prize winners and nominees. Last year's prize was split between Onyeka Igwe and Morgan Quaintance.
Exhibition and Award Ceremony
The winner will be announced on 24 November 2026 at a London ceremony. Works from the four artists will be displayed across the UK and at the Whitechapel Gallery in London from 17 November to 13 December.
