Blatella Films win Silver Award at Best SME Awards

South Essex based film makers Blatella Films owned by Ben and Natalie Scarsbrook won a Silver Award in the Best Enterprise category at the Best SME Awards on Friday. The inaugural Best SME Awards celebrated the UK’s top-performing small and medium-sized enterprises, honouring gold, and silver winners at the centrally located Mercure Daventry Court hotel.

The Best SME Awards are designed to highlight innovation, resilience, and business excellence, as SMEs play a vital role in the UK economy. The inaugural event drew exceptional entries from businesses demonstrating remarkable growth, creativity, and impact within their sectors.

The judging panel, made up of experienced business leaders and industry experts, faced a challenging task in selecting winners due to the high standard of entries.

Debbie Gilbert, founder of The Best SME Awards, said:
“These awards are needed to ensure UK SMEs are properly judged and recognised. Our business experts scrutinise each entry, with no voting, so winners truly earn their recognition.”

Head Judge, business expert Roma Bhowmick, added:
“I was impressed by the standard of entries showing innovation, meaningful impact, and excellent customer service. The winners reflect talent, ambition, and entrepreneurial spirit from across the UK. In these challenging trading conditions, the selected businesses truly demonstrated determination and resilience.”

Headline sponsor peer2peer founder John Acton commented:
“These awards really do demonstrate the tenacity of SMEs in the UK and showcase what talented businesses we have powering forward!”

Ben collected the award from the event on Friday and said:
“To be recognised like this, for how we’ve built our business over the last 13 plus years, is an amazing feeling. The evening was a great experience, everyone was in the best mood and the atmosphere was incredible. To be in a room full of such successful businesses was a standout moment for me, and to be awarded the Silver award was the icing on the cake.”

He added:
“We pride ourselves on excellent customer service and honesty with every client and on top of our top-of-the-line 4K cinema cameras and the most up to date editing facilities, we offer truly cost effective and efficient film services.”

“At the core of our company is a drive and passion to make engaging, high-quality films that tell compelling stories. We firmly believe that corporate and community filmmaking can and should be interesting, well-made and be able to grab audiences.”

Whilst Blatella Films focuses on corporate and commissioned film work, in 2024, they produced their first independent feature documentary ‘Our Journey to Pride’. This film has so far garnered 27 awards from film festivals across four continents, which is something Ben and Natalie are extremely proud of.

Blatella Films are busy filming for their next upcoming feature documentary film about the ‘Essex Girl’ stereotype. The film, Witchcraft & Stilettos: Redefining the Essex Girl Narrative is about exposing the impact the common stereotype has on women and girls from the county, and will premiere later this year, followed by screenings around Essex.

With this new film, Natalie, the film’s Director is exploring her interest in feminism and activism through filmmaking. It combines a life-long passion for storytelling and history.