The Edinburgh International Film Festival is to significantly boost its prize money and will double the number of its special red carpet galas as part of a plan to return to "greatness".
The festival will also introduce a new documentary award for its 68th edition next year.
The Michael Powell Award, previously worth £5000, will now come with a cash prize of £20,000. Documentaries will no longer be in the running for that award but will be given their own prize, worth £10,000.
The Best International Film award will remain but will see its prize money doubled to £10,000.
The 2014 festival will also add a further two galas to the existing opening and closing films.
Bob Last, the festival's chairman, said the plans were "a serious statement of intent" to "remind people that Edinburgh is the place to bring your feature".
He added: "Edinburgh International Film Festival is on a journey back to greatness. There was a year zero [2011] at Edinburgh, prior to the involvement of the current team, when organisers threw all their sticks in the air and tried to reinvent the festival. They got it wrong.
"But the festival turned a corner a couple of years back with the appointment of Chris Fujiwara as artistic director and we are rebuilding."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article