Top prize for Welsh film

Ioan Gruffudd's latest film King Arthur is released this summer

A Welsh film has won the top award at this year's Celtic TV and Film Festival.

Starring Ioan Gruffudd, Sian Phillips, Rhys Ifans and former Catatonia singer Cerys Matthews, Dal Yma Nawr (Still Here Now) was awarded the Spirit of the Festival prize at a ceremony in Dundee.

Judges praised the film, which traces Welsh poetry over the last two millennia, for "wedding images with words to stunning effect" and for conveying an "authentic sense of land and its people in so many different ways."

It was made for S4C by Cardiff-born director Marc Evans and Fiction Factory.

Evans, who won critical acclaim for his 2002 psychological horror My Little Eye, celebrated a hat-trick of Celtic Film awards after successes in 1994 and 1984.

'Cutting edge'

He had previously tasted success for his short film Johnny Be Good and for the S4C knights-of-the-round-table comedy Ymadawiad Arthur.

As she presented the award to the production team, journalist Sheila Macdonald said: "The film is at the cutting edge of contemporary work."

• Meanwhile BBC Wales picked up more awards than any other broadcaster at the Celtic Film and TV Festival Awards

  The Celtiaid yr Oes Haearn (Celts of the Iron Age) website; the television drama Belonging; and BBC Wales news journalist Adrian Masters were among the winners.