From Scotland to Syria to San Sebastian: Meet Ben Sharrock, the prize-winning young Scot at the heart of Basque cinema's New Wave

Sharrock's arrival in Syria was already the result of one conversion. Edinburgh-born, he had entered his home town university to study International Relations but had fallen in love with Arabic instead. But in Damascus – and can you think of a more appropriate place? – he had another conversion when fate took him to the city's film festival. There he encountered work by Middle Eastern film-makers such as Israel's Eran Kolirin and Palestinian director Elia Suleiman. There he “got the film bug”. And there he decided he wanted to be a director.

The result is Pikadero, Sharrock's debut feature. The day before we meet it had its UK premiere at the Edinburgh International Film Festival (EIFF), which is why the 28-year-old is in Scotland and not in his adopted home town of San Sebastian in the Basque region of Spain.

Written and directed by Sharrock, Pikadero is a bittersweet comedy drama set against the background of Spain's ongoing economic woes and tells a boy-meets-girl story through a series of unconsummated romantic trysts. In the end, the girl leaves (for Edinburgh, would you believe?) while the boy stays, taking his chances with a dead-end factory job.

A pikadero, by the way, is a public place used for sex. The idea of using it as a way to talk about the economic crisis came to Sharrock when he read a news report about the rise in the popularity of pikaderos, a result of more and more young people having to live with their parents. It was, he says, a “lightbulb moment”.

The film has already won a multitude of awards – including, after we speak, the prestigious Michael Powell Award, of which more later – but it's equally remarkable for being performed entirely in Basque. Sharrock, whose girlfriend and producer Irune Gurtubai is Basque, speaks the language well enough to direct in it, though he wrote the screenplay in English. So how did the Basques take to an untested Scottish director making a film about them?

“It was quite exotic in a way, a Scottish person coming over and making this film, so that gave us a bit of cachet,” he says. “And the Basques feel a real affinity with Scotland. They're really connected. So I think it helped me being Scottish. I think if I had been English it might have been difficult.”

As for the finished item, the Basques loved it. So did the Spanish. Pikadero won a top prize at the San Sebastian International Film Festival and has since secured a domestic TV deal.

“I think for the Basques they saw themselves reflected on screen in a way which is completely different to how they're normally reflected on screen,” says Sharrock. Likewise, the film's use of the economic crisis and the plight of Spain's young jobless as a backdrop also struck a chord. “That really connected with people and really connected with what was going on. People found it very relatable because it's a real situation which is affecting a lot of people, and I think it talked about that in a unique and quirky way.”

Pikadero has also brought a different style of film-making to Spanish and Basque audiences. In the tone of affectionate whimsy which runs through it, many critics have seen echoes of the work of another Scottish film-maker: Bill Forsyth.

Sharrock laughs when I mention the director of Gregory's Girl and Local Hero. He's heard all this before. “I didn't think about Bill Forsyth when I was making the film but then it occurred to me that at a point in my childhood I basically watched Gregory's Girl every week for a long time. If I could name one film from my childhood, it would be that. So it's really bizarre because it just hadn't crossed my mind. Then I realised: 'Actually that's probably there, inside me'.”

Intrigued by the subconscious connection, he recently re-watched Local Hero too. “I went 'Oh yes, I can see myself in that'.”

Born in Edinburgh and educated at the city's Boroughmuir High School, Sharrock's journey from there to Syria to Dubai (where he worked as a creative in an advertising agency) and on to the Basque region of Spain looks at first glance like a series of haphazard 90 degree turns governed more by chance than anything else.

But another way of looking at it is that he has described an almost perfect circle, gathering languages and the kind of world view that international travel brings, pricking his interest in what he calls the “ethnographic” and the “anthropological” by immersing himself in other cultures, then filtering the whole lot through the thing that has always fascinated him most: drama.

After all, both his parents were actors and all through school it was the only thing he wanted to be. So his decision to shoot a short film two days after graduating and use it to try to get into film school wasn't so much a U-turn as him coming full circle. Back to where he was always meant to be.

“I made the decision that I wanted to go to film school and study film directing. I didn't tell anyone either because I didn't really know if I could do it,” he says. “I didn't have any film experience. But again it was this really weird thing, like with me watching Gregory's Girl, because at the point where I decided I wanted to make films I looked back on my childhood and realised I'd spent a lot of it making videos and editing them together. In school, media studies was my favourite subject and I made films there too.”

Sharrock's next film will see him make another kind of return, this time to Syria. He can't actually shoot there, but he intends to tackle the refugee crisis with a story set in a refugee reception centre, probably somewhere in Europe.

“Obviously it's a much more serious subject matter so I have to be very sensitive around it, but I don't want to make a film which is looking at the horrible and bleak and depressing side of being a refugee,” he explains. “Of course there are all those elements, but what I really want to do it make a story which is more hopeful. I think that's really important. It will have elements of humour in it, but it will be a lot more serious than Pikadero.”

When Sharrock and I run into each other again, it's a week later, the day after the EU referendum. By this time he knows he's won the Michael Powell award, the Edinburgh International Film Festival's top prize, though as it hasn't yet been announced and can't tell anyone. By the time we finally catch up about his win he's at the Ischia Film Festival in the Bay of Naples, where Pikadero is again in competition.

“I was really surprised, I wasn't expecting it at all,” he tells me over the phone from the sun-drenched Italian island. “Obviously I'm really pleased and excited, especially to win it at my home festival. I hope this helps us get distribution in the UK.”

And, irony of ironies, on the same day that Sharrock learned about the Michael Powell Award he also received some good news from Brussels. Nothing to do with the EU referendum, of course: instead he learned that Pikadero had won the Cineuropa Prize at the Brussels Film Festival. The prize recognises contributions to European language and celebrates integration. You have to laugh, don't you? “It does all seems a bit ironic somehow,” he says.

So Scotland's brightest young directorial talent continues to travel Europe's film festivals with Pikadero. He's hailed by some on the continent as a Spanish director, by others as a brave new voice in Basque cinema which, he admits, “is having a bit of a moment”. With a home in San Sebastian and deep loyalties in the region, I suspect he's happier with the second description than the first.

But though he won't be shooting a film in Scotland any time soon – “I struggle with the idea because I find it a lot more difficult to look at my own culture” – he's happiest of all for his homeland to claim him. Scottish, Spanish or Basque I ask him. “Always a Scottish film-maker," he replies. "But maybe a Scottish film-maker with an international outlook.”

Nothing wrong with that.