Casting directors Shaheen Baig and Jina Jay will receive honorary fellowships from the UK’s National Film and Television School (NFTS).
The fellowships will be presented at the school’s graduation ceremony on March 6 at the BFI Southbank in London. The award recognises an individual’s outstanding contribution to the industry.
Baig recently won an Emmy for her work on Adolescence, while Lady Macbeth and H Is For Hawk are among her film credits. Jay’s casting credits include Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, The Grand Budapest Hotel and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.
The pair also co-founded NFTS’s first casting certificate course, launched in 2020.
The Fellowships are being presented just weeks before the Ampas voting body give out its first-ever Academy Award for best casting.
NFTS chair Sophie Turner Laing said: “Casting sits at the heart of great storytelling and Jina Jay and Shaheen Baig have fundamentally shaped how audiences experience film and television through the exceptional talent they discover and bring to the screen.”
Previous recipients of the NFTS Fellowship include Sam Mendes, Barbara Broccoli, Lynne Ramsay and Jack Thorne.