This year, the Edinburgh International Film Festival will debut 21 feature films, 10 of which will screen as part of the festival’s official competition strand, which is set to run from August 13 to 19.
Titles competing for the festival’s Sean Connery Prize include Mission, the latest feature from Scottish filmmaker Paul Wright (For Those In Peril), starring George MacKay and Rosy McEwen (Blue Jean). The film has been described as the “punk exploration” of an alienated young man who throws off the shackles of his solitary life in an attempt to experience the highs and lows of existence at its most extreme.
Also screening in competition is The Mad World of Harvey Kurtzman, a documentary feature about the American cartoonist and editor Harvey Kurtzman. The film includes contributions from Terry Gilliam, the late Stan Lee and Robert Crumb. And Little Miss Sunshine producer Marc Turtletaub returns to feature filmmaking with Borges and Me, his first feature as a director since 2023’s Jules. The film is an adaptation of Jay Parini’s bestselling memoir.
This year’s edition also marks Festival Director Paul Ridd’s third at the helm. Ridd joined Edinburgh from Picturehouse in 2023, where he last served as head of acquisitions.
“In these two past editions, we’ve created a festival with the competition strands at its core. They really have an identity now,” Ridd tells Deadline, adding that this year the festival has a record number of world premiere titles. The increase, he explains, best illustrates how Edinburgh has carved out a position for itself on the busy festival calendar.
“We’re a legitimate launchpad for new and emerging filmmakers as well as established voices,” Ridd explains. “We have 10 films in competition each year, and last year seven of those 10 films went on to get distribution in the UK, U.S., or both.”
One of those titles was Elliot Tuttle’s much-talked-about feature Blue Film, which debuted at last year’s festival before landing in UK cinemas via Peccadillo Pictures and the U.S. with Obscured Releasing. The film follows a fetish camboy (Kieron Moore) who accepts a private house call, only to discover his masked client is his former middle-school teacher and a convicted sex offender.
Blue Film landed positive notices from critics out of Edinburgh and upon its theatrical release. Deadline’s critic Damon Wise described the film as a “very deftly played two-hander.” But shortly after the Edinburgh screening, Tuttle revealed the film had been turned down by every major festival it had been submitted to because of its subject matter. So why did Ridd and Edinburgh take a chance on the feature?
“It was just a film that embodied in many ways the things we value and think are important,” Ridd says. “It was made on a micro budget outside of traditional systems. It was made on a controversial subject and was beautifully acted. We saw it in those terms when we watched it.”
The Incomer, the debut feature from Edinburgh-born filmmaker Louis Paxton, will open this year’s festival. Set on a remote Scottish island and starring Domhnall Gleeson (Ex Machina), the film follows siblings Isla (Rankin) and Sandy (O’Rourke), who have lived in peaceful isolation for decades, hunting seabirds, chatting to mythic creatures, and defending their isle from dreaded Incomers. The official synopsis reads: “Their world is upended with the arrival of Daniel (Gleeson), an awkward council worker, tasked with uprooting them to the mainland.” Louise Lockwood’s debut documentary feature Bel will close the festival. The film tells the story of Beldina Odenyo, the Kenyan-Scottish musician who performed under the stage name Heir of the Cursed.
After Since Yesterday: The Untold Story of Scotland’s Girl Bands, a documentary feature on Scottish girl bands from the 1960s to the present in 2024, and Paul Sng’s Irvine Welsh doc Reality Is Not Enough, in 2025, Bel will be the third documentary on Scottish artistry to close Edinburgh in as many years. Ridd says the trend is “completely unintentional.”
“We’re always looking for something to close the festival with the right spirit behind it, and it’s always a very difficult process,” he says. “It’s just very nice that in the last three years we’ve done three films which, in different ways, talk about artistic integrity and creation in ways that feel kind of interesting and innovative.”
With a smile, he adds: “But that is not to say that next year we’re absolutely guaranteeing that we’re going to close with a film about a Scottish artist.”
Elsewhere, Iranian filmmaker Abdolreza Kahani returns to Edinburgh with his latest feature Empty Heaven. The filmmaker was in competition last year with Mortician, which won the Sean Connery Prize. He used the £50,000 cash prize to fund Empty Heaven. In the Out of Competition strand, films screening include Carlos Conceição’s Bodyhackers, Molly Manners’ Extra Geography, Nicolas Winding Refn’s latest Her Private Hell, and Gregg Araki’s I Want Your Sex.
This year, Edinburgh also launches its honorary Outstanding Contribution to Cinema Award, which will be handed to actor and director Kenneth Branagh. The festival’s midnight madness strand continues with Chee Keong Cheung’s Bad Day at the Office, starring John Hannah, opening and Daniel Goldhaber’s latest feature, Faces Of Death, starring Barbie Ferreira (Euphoria) and Charli xcx, closing the strand. The EIFF lineup also features seven retrospective screenings, including a 30th-anniversary celebration of Trainspotting at Leith Theatre, with live cast and crew commentary, followed by DJ sets by Irvine Welsh and Darren Emerson.
“This is the first time something like this has been done on this scale, certainly in terms of the number of people who will be in the room watching it,” Ridd says of the live commentary event.
“It’s really designed to emulate the format that was so popular with DVD commentaries, providing an opportunity for cast and crew to reflect on memories of making the film, or to just banter with one another.”
Edinburgh has yet to confirm which members of the film’s cast and crew will participate in the live commentary session; however, the film’s lead Ewan McGregor is confirmed for one of the festival’s industry in conversation sessions, so it is safe to speculate he will be present at the Leith Theatre. When asked whether director Danny Boyle might be present, Ridd smiles and deflects: “We’ve got some great people lined up,” he says.
“I think it’s going to be beautiful.”
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