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As a film director, David Leland's first production was of his own screenplay of Wish You Were Here. He won a British Academy Award for the screenplay plus several other international awards, including the Fran¨ois Truffaut Award at the Valledolid Festival. In 1988, he directed the black comedy Checking Out starring Jeff Daniels, Michael Tucker and Melanie Mayron and in 1990, The Big Man starring Liam Neeson, Joanne Whalley Kilmer and Billy Connolly. More recently in 1998, he wrote and directed Land Girls, starring Catherine MacCormack, Anna Friel, Rachel Weisz and Steven Mackintosh and he has just finished filming Band of Brothers. David has directed a number of music videos, including three for The Travelling Wilburys, working with George Harrison, Bob Dylan, Jeff Lynne and the great Roy Orbison, in one of his last appearances; also for Tom Petty and the British comedian Lenny Henry.

Apart from writing Wish You Were HerePersonal Services, directed by Terry Jones which, together with Wish You Were Here, won David the Peter Sellers Award for Comedy and another British Academy nomination. He co-wrote the screenplay of Mona Lisa, for which he also received a British Academy nomination. Last year, he also wrote Running Wild and The White River Kid.

His first and only play written for the theatre was Psy-Warriors, presented first at the Crucible Theatre, Sheffield and then at the Royal Court Theatre, London. His first film for television was Beloved Enemy which was directed by Alan Clarke at the BBC. Alan and David then went on to collaborate on a television film version of Psy-Warriors. For Central Television he wrote the award - winning quartet of films: Birth of a Nation, which won him the Prix Futura, Germany; Flying Into the Wind, Rhino and Made in Britain, which won the Prix Italia for David and Alan Clarke, who directed it. Although all four films were fiercely critical of the British educational system and of the treatment of young offenders by the authorities, they have since found their way onto the Cambridge University Examination Board's syllabus for schools and colleges.