Film director Danny Boyle has expressed a lack of confidence in the achievements of the British film industry at an event at the BFI Southbank in London.

In remarks reported by the Daily Mail, Boyle said: “It’s a terrible thing to say at the home of British film but I am not sure we are great film-makers, to be absolutely honest.”

He added: “As a nation, our two art-forms are theatre, in a middle-class sense, and pop music, because we are extraordinary at it.”

The film-maker was speaking after a screening of 28 Days Later, the Alex Garland-scripted zombie thriller from 2002, which is part of the BFI’s In Dreams Are Monsters horror movie season.

Boyle has a string of awards to his name for his film-making, including the best director Oscar in 2009 for Slumdog Millionaire and the Bafta for best British film in 1995 for Shallow Grave.

Boyle’s most recent project was the six-part punk rock series Pistol, which premiered on Disney+ in May, and before that the feature film Yesterday, released in 2019. He stood down from directing Daniel Craig’s final James Bond film No Time to Die after a dispute over the script.