Gillies MacKinnon (born 8 January 1948, Glasgow) is a Scottish film director, writer and painter. He attended the Glasgow School of Art where he studied mural painting. Following this he became an art teacher and cartoonist, and about this time he traveled with a nomadic tribe in the Sahara for six months. In the 1970s he studied at the Middlesex Polytechnic and in the 1980s in the National Film and Television School. He made a short film called Passing Glory as his graduation piece, a dour recreation of Glasgow in the 1950s and 1960s. It was premiered at the 1986 Edinburgh International Film Festival, where it won the first Scottish Film Prize.