A Dairy Story has won the Audience Award at Central Scotland Documentary Festival, following its UK premiere screening at the Macrobert Arts Centre in Stirling on 1st November 2025.
The Audience Award, voted for by festivalgoers, was presented on Monday 4th November, by Festival Director Grahame Reid.
Director Ian Findlay said:
“The Audience Award means a lot to us because it shows that people genuinely connected with David and Wilma’s story, and screening in Stirling felt significant for a Scottish documentary. The festival team put real care into the programming and the filmmaker sessions. It was an inspiring few days, and we are grateful to everyone involved.”
Central Scotland Documentary Festival is Scotland’s largest documentary festival, with Stirling holding particular significance for Scottish documentary filmmaking as the home of John Grierson, widely regarded as the father of the documentary form.
The win follows A Dairy Story’s success at IndieCork Film Festival in October, where it won the Louis Marcus Award for Best Documentary at its world premiere.
The film follows David and Wilma Finlay of Rainton Farm in Dumfries & Galloway as they developed Europe’s first commercially viable cow-with-calf dairy system, keeping calves with their mothers rather than separating them at birth.
Additional screenings will be announced soon.
What you told us
Audiences told us they left A Dairy Story feeling inspired. Over half were new to the cinema they saw it in, and nine in ten would go back.
Audience survey launched as community screenings approach
A one-week audience survey has been launched alongside the film’s published distribution plan, ahead of community screening bookings opening on 18 October.
The Distribution Plan
As our festival run ends, find out where A Dairy Story is on its distribution journey, including roughly when it will be available for community screenings in the UK and around the world.