Emmanuel Anyiam-Osigwe, the man who founded the British Urban Film Festival 14 years ago, has been recognized in the New Year’s honors list with an MBE for ‘services to the Black and minority ethnic film industry’.

Anyiam-Osigwe is a familiar face to UK film audiences having spent 17 years working in film festivals and awards ceremonies, firstly at BFM (Black Filmmaker Magazine), followed by Screennation and latterly with BUFF (British Urban Film Festival) which he founded in 2005.

In 2016, Metro newspaper ranked the film festival no.1 in a list of global list of film festivals to attend which celebrates diversity.

In 2017, BT Group sponsored the British Urban Film Festival – the first corporate sponsorship of its’ kind by the company in its’ history.

In 2018, he was headhunted for the post of Head of Cinema at the Barbican. In the same year, he was appointed a jury member of the BAFTA-recognized Aesthetica Short Film Festival. He also produced Clare Anyiam-Osigwe’s debut feature, ‘No Shade’, the first BUFF Originals production.

The film’s release last November made Clare just the 6th Black British female director (to date) to receive a theatrical release in UK cinema history, going onto win awards both domestically and internationally.

Emmanuel has previously been awarded an icon recognition honor by Creativity Hub magazine for services to film exhibition (in 2015) and earlier this year, was inducted into the Britflix Power 100 list of prominent and emerging figures in independent film and TV.