We love hearing from all our Underwire winners a few months after the festival, and continue to be so impressed by both the tenancity and vigour of our UW alumni. We caught up with Taina Galis who won the Best Cinematography award at the 2012 Festival for A Cuillin Rising.

UnderWire has been brilliant, thank you! It meant a lot to me to work on A Cuillin Rising in the first place and I consider the prize to be for everyone who worked on it. I hope to work with Catriona MacInnes, director/writer of A Cuillin Rising, again on the feature that she’s developing called Gift from God. It’s set in Romania, the country where I was born - though in a place that I can only imagine for now.

Winning at UnderWire has given me exposure - three new directors have contacted me directly because of the screening - and also given me some invaluable gifts: an introduction to the excellent Sara Putt, her colleagues and their networking circles; and also membership of WFTV.

I’ve been working on 2 shorts: Say Nothing, directed by Roland Kennedy, and A Short Epic about Love, directed by Josephine Halbert; and also on the documentary/fiction feature Estate, directed by Andrea Luka Zimmerman.

I’ve started prep on Fyzal Boulifa’s debut feature, Teenage Model. I’ve previously worked with Fyzal on three shorts as cinematographer and co-editor: Whore., Burn My Body and The Curse.

I’m also working on Kanchi Wichmann’s second feature Normal Love, and a documentary about Edith Tudor-Hart, directed by Peter Stephan Jungk. Also, in development, Restaurante, a Mexican feature directed by Gabylu Lara.