A Worcester Park filmmaker has won a national competition sponsored by MTV, after making a film about the capital’s spiralling knife crime epidemic.

Akash Lockmun, 25, wrote and directed the 10 minute docu-drama If Not Now, When, with his filmmaking partner, 23-year-old Nilesh Bell Gorsia.

They were announced as one of the winners of the Show Us What You’re Made of competition run by MTV on Tuesday, February 17.

The duo’s film took a year to make and featured children from Brixton and Camberwell who had experienced knife crime.

The film follows Daniel, who is stabbed on his way home in a dispute about territory, and we see the ripple effect this has on his friends and family.

Akash said their inspiration came from media coverage of the rising numbers of street stabbings.

“We felt the way newspapers tell the story is in numbers rather than focus on the human element,” he said.

“We wanted to use the medium of film to show violence can happen to anyone and if we don’t act now it will continue to happen.”

The competition was run by MTV in partnership with the Home Office’s It Doesn’t Have to Happen anti-knife crime campaign.

Entrants were challenged to use creative ways to get the anti-violence messages across and from 500 entries, Akash and Nilesh, from Lewisham, was picked as one of the winners and scooped a £1,000 prize.

Akash, a freelance director and producer said he was shocked but thrilled to win and hoped to show the film to local schools to continue the anti-violence message.