A LANGUAGES student has won a prestigious University of Cambridge prize after creating an innovative documentary exploring gender discrimination in France and Spain.

Judges described the entry from Eve Maylor, 17, as 'brilliant'.

Eve's documentary was inspired by an app she discovered in lockdown which allows her to talk with native French and Spanish speakers.

She discovered the app following the horrific murder of Sarah Everard and as a response, Eve began to research levels of gender prejudice in other countries and cultures.

Eve, who also produced an 850-word report on the subject, spoke to French and Spanish students on the HelloTalk app to discover more about their experiences.

Judges praised how Eve had managed to create an original research study about sex discrimination in two different countries despite lockdown restrictions.

She said: “The app has completely changed my life.

“I was absolutely over the moon to win a prize like this.

"I struggle sometimes with believing in my language ability.”

The Ripon Grammar School student was awarded second place in the highly competitive Cambridge Languages Collective contest.

One of the judging panel, Dr Hugues Azérad, praised Eve’s documentary for being brilliantly edited, emotional and sharp, saying: “It was very creative with fantastic mixing of images and music, all sombre and powerful.

"It impresses for all the good reasons: topic, creativity, depth and range.”

Eve, from Ripon, explained how, as a response to the Sarah Everard murder, she began to accumulate research regarding how gender prejudice translated to other countries and cultures.

She said: “I then came up with the idea of using my app to interview some of the new friends I had made overseas about their experiences in their own countries, then edited all of the clips together and summarised some of the key details which I had learnt from my research to form a documentary.”

She concluded: “In general, I found both France and Spain appear similar regarding progression of women’s rights.

"The most valuable thing I obtained from my project was friendship.

"I love being able to communicate and form relationships with those from other countries by speaking in their language.

“I have always disliked the expectation for others to be able to speak English.

"I strongly believe there should be a stronger emphasis on improving our linguistic skills in British schools.”