I could’ve seen Peter Mullan‘s Neds at the Marrakech Film Festival last December, but a bad-wifi mood pocket interfered. Now I really want to see it due to Neds having defeated The King’s Speech to win the Best Film prize at the Evening Standard‘s British Film Awards in association with the London Film Museum.

Andrew Garfield won the org’s Best Actor award for his work in The Social Network and Never Let Me Go, and Kristin Scott Thomas won the Best Actress prize for her lead performance in Leaving.

Neds (i.e., “non-educated delinquents”) “draws on Mullan’s own experience of Glasgow’s gang culture,” says a British newspaper account. “[It has] a gritty realism which has sparked genuine clashes among rival gangs in Scottish cinema audiences.

“Presenting the award at a star-studded ceremony, actress Emily Watson — who has just made Steven Spielberg‘s War Horse with actor/director Mullan — said Neds was ‘raw and unflinching and very difficult to watch.’

“She urged Mullan, whose last film as director, The Magdalene Sisters, was released eight years ago, not to wait so long until his next.”