Originally quoted from The Scotsman Sent to Ewan News from The Best of Ewan Monday, December 17, 2001 // 10:03 a.m. My mother, the film-maker Brian Pendreigh Monday, 17th December 2001 Ewan McGregor's mother Carol, pictured, who has been granted £60,000 to produce a Tartan Shorts film.

Ewan McGregor’s mother is following in her son’s footsteps by entering the world of film production. Carol McGregor, a 57-year-old former teacher, is short-listed for a £60,000 grant to make one of Scotland’s world-renowned Tartan Shorts. For the past few years, she has worked as her son’s personal assistant and provided audio descriptions of films for the blind. She met Marc de Launay at the cast and crew screening of A Small Piece of Paradise, his short drama about a son’s troubled relationship with his father and his passion for football. Mr De Launay asked her to record an audio description for the film, which screened at the Edinburgh Film Festival, but sent her several other scripts, and she agreed to act as producer on The Promise, a nine-minute epic that begins in the First World War and spans several generations and countries. The latest batch of Scottish Screen shorts could prove a family affair. Ms McGregor’s brother, Denis Lawson, who appeared in the original Star Wars films and inspired Ewan to become an actor, has written and hopes to direct Solid Geometry, on the short list for Scottish Screen’s other major short film scheme, New Found Land. Carol McGregor has set up a new company, called McDongall Films, with former Scottish Screen executive Janice Cutting, and The Promise should be its first production. "We liked the story and Janice and I decided to go ahead and try to get it made into a short film. We applied to Scottish Screen and were delighted to be short-listed," said Ms McGregor. Mr De Launay was inspired by the discovery of old war diaries and undelivered letters in a relative’s loft, to write the story of a Scottish soldier and an Austrian, who are blown up and land in the same crater in No Man’s Land during the First World War. The Scot dies and the Austrian promises to deliver a letter to his sweetheart, although he is shell-shocked. It remains undelivered until his grandson attempts to track down the recipient over 60 years later. Mr de Launay described Carol McGregor as a "very astute businesswoman", adding: "She has brought a lot of experience in a business sense. Creatively, she’s very, very good; very helpful as script editor and comes up with a lot of very good ideas." Ms McGregor is determined not to use her famous family to advance the project: "I’m not doing it on the back of anybody else." Denis Lawson said: "She hasn’t asked for my advice and I haven’t given her any. She’s very bright and she’s ploughing her own furrow." Tartan Shorts has been hugely successful in helping the careers of new film-makers, including Peter Mullan and Lynne Ramsay. Peter Capaldi won an Oscar for his short, Franz Kafka’s It’s a Wonderful Life. Already Ms McGregor has her sights set on bigger things and is developing several feature film projects, although she refuses to go into details. Ewan also has his own production company, Natural Nylon, a partnership with Jude Law and other young British actors, and he was one of the producers on Nora, in which he played James Joyce.