JB Rutagarama’s journey Back Home was the acclaimed winner of the Mike Figgis Award at the graduation show of the University of Northumbria’s film school this year. It is, as Mike Figgis stated in awarding his prize, "A film with heart, it is about people interacting with other people."

The film traces the emotional return journey of JB to a genocidally-ravaged Rwanda and revealed the depths of human anguish and relief that even fleeting moments reveal, when families reunite six years after being riven apart by war.

Back Home exposes the confusion of complex feelings of the journeymaker for his native land and about his own identity, scarred as it is by his decision to flee the war, confused by exile in the developed world; shock at his reluctance to abandon English for his native tongue, right up to an emotional reunion with his mother after six years of forced separation.

All of this captured with great presence by Daniel Elliot, whose camera spares nothing of the ultimate joy of reunion with those we love or the shock horror of desiccated, skeletal bodies in the half-light of the memorial rooms, bringing the dawning consciousness that these too are people who were once loved, but died, immortal witnesses of man’s ultimate inhumanity to man.

Back Home camera op Daniel Elliot also took the Tyne Tees Television Script Award for the short fiction film Getting There, which he wrote and directed, another film journey, with fleeting glimpses this time, capturing just a few of the joys and tribulations of family life. As one of the film’s characters espouses, "It’s not arriving somewhere that matters, it’s how you get there." Daniel Elliot seems to be getting there quite well.

The Pilgrim Productions Award for Direction went to Vikash Patel for his evocative short doc Nathan, encapsulating the world of a child in a five minute snapshot portrayal of Nathan. The director used split screen technique to clever effect, trebling the footage allowed for a five minute slot, but cramming all the fun, confusion and sheer exuberance that is part of everyday living for a child. Anyone not enjoying this film suffered a deprived childhood.

An innovation at Northumbria this year is an award from a firm of accountants, Ernst and Young, for Best Value From a Budget. Having scrutinised the budgets of the short-listed films carefully, they decided that what they were looking for was a poundstretcher. Their runner-up was the exuberant Nathan, but without question they decided best value for budget was JB Rutagarama’s moving documentary Back Home.