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McGregor, Branagh and Vachon bound for Edinburgh

Film festival launches 79th programme of premieres and encounters

by Richard Mowe

The Incomer Photo: Courtesy of Sundance Institute

With a raft of 38 new indy feature films including 21 world premieres and a sprinkling of significant names on the guest list among them Ewan McGregor, producer Christine Vachon, and Kenneth Branagh as well as a 30th anniversary Trainspotting jamboree in Leith, championed by author Irvine Welsh, the Edinburgh's International Film Festivals seems to have a certain added bounce in its step in the third year since its “resurrection”. The revival followed the collapse of parent body the Centre for the Moving Image.

At the programme launch in Edinburgh (yesterday 1 July) and in London today festival director Paul Ridd and festival producer Emma Boa outlined the highlights including an endless plethora of shorts. The event, supported by Scottish Screen among others, will open on 13 August with Louis Paxton’s Scottish island comedy The Incomer about two siblings, played by Gayle Rankin and Grant O'Rourke, and co-starring Domhnall Gleeson, which bowed at the Sundance Film Festival in January. Ridd described it as “a delightfully strange, distinctively dark comedy."

Ridd makes no secret of his admiration for the Park City festival. He noted that this year had seen “a seismic shift for Sundance with the loss of its founder Robert Redford and the news of its move next year to Boulder in Colorado. Given our shared missions we have looked to Sundance as a guiding star and share its spirit of optimism for our medium”.

Paul Ridd at the press launch Photo: Richard Mowe

Ridd quipped that “in our strange times here in Scotland it is worth saying unequivocally that we have no plans to move city or head south of the Border?” The industry-focussed TV Festival has announced it will leave Edinburgh next year for Manchester although Ridd sees its departure as an opportunity “to fill the gap.”

He pointed out that seven out of ten films premiered in last year’s main EIFF competition had secured UK and international distribution after the Festival. “This a phenomenal result for films from emerging talents. The success for our Festival has always been half about the seven days in August and half about what happens next for our films and filmmakers.”

Also on the opening night the Festival kicks off its Midnight Madness strand with the world premiere of Bad Day at the Office by Chee Keong Chung, with John Hannah (also in The Incomer) and Radha Mitchell, in which a man wakes up in a strange hotel room with a dead body in the bathtub and no memory of the night before. Ridd described it as “a relentless cinematic roller-coaster.”

The strand also will feature the world premiere of Rise of the Footsoldier: Retribution, and UK premieres of Daniel Goldhaber’s Faces of Death and Caleb Phillips’ Imposters.

The 79th edition will close on 19 August with Louise Lockwood's sensitive portrait of Kenyan Scottish musician singer and songwriter, Belle Dina Adeno. Odenyo performed under the stage name Heir of the Cursed, and worked across Scotland’s theatre and poetry communities. After her acclaimed performance at the Scottish Album of the Year Awards in 2021, she took her own life, leaving behind raw, intimate video diaries and a hard drive full of original songs.

Emma Boa Photo: Richard Mowe

Out of Competition world premieres range from Carlos Conceicao’s body horror excursion Bodyhackers, Marc Turtletaub’s adaptation of Jay Parini’s memoir Borges And Me about poet Jorge Luis Borges, and Empty Heaven, an Iranian dissident thriller from Abdolreza Kahani, who last year’s on the Sean Connery prize for Mortician.

The Trainspotting anniversary (as previously announced) will be marked by a special live commentary screening on 14 August in historic Leith Theatre with cast and crew sharing exclusive behind the scenes anecdotes about the making of the film. The screening will be followed by a club night with DJ sets from Irvine Welsh and Darren Emerson, whose music as part of Underworld is synonymous with the film and its iconic soundtrack.

Leith Theatre recently signed a 50-year lease and secured funding from The National Lottery Heritage Fund following a 20-year campaign to help secure the future of the Grade B listed building. McGregor, besides participating in the Trainspotting event, will talk about his life and career as part of an on stage In Conversation event supported by BAFTA Scotland. Branagh will be the first recipient of a new EIFF Outstanding Contribution to Cinema Award tied to a 30th anniversary screening of his Shakespeare adaptation of Hamlet in which he starred and directed. Other restoration specials include Little Miss Sunshine (20th anniversary) and Sexy Beast (25th anniversary). Producer Vachon who has supported the careers of Todd Haynes, Cameron Mitchell and Celine Song, will talk about her prolific and ground-breaking work. Veteran Bruce Dern, 89, has been billed for an In Conversation event although he has looked frail in appearances this year after the death of his wife Diane Ladd last year. He was glimpsed at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year with his actress daughter Laura Dern for the premiere of Dernsie. In Edinburgh he will also attend a screening of Northbound, a world premiere. Dern plays an elderly rogue in a nursing home who teams up with his grandson to break out and head for Canada’s wide open spaces. The Festival also will show one of his Oscar-nominated performances in Coming Home..

The Festival, having abandoned Fringe-style pop-up venues in the first year of its new incarnation, will return to the Cineworld at Fountainbridge, as well aa Filmhouse, and the Cameo Cinema. The tighter geographical spread will help attendees duck and dive between screenings rather than battling Festival crowds across Edinburgh to reach the now jettisoned Vue Cinema at the top of Leith Walk.

Ridd concluded the proceedings with his trademark exhortation to “Bring it on!”

Edinburgh International Film Festivals runs from 13 to 19 August.

The full feature film line-up is:

Sean Connery Prize for Feature Filmmaking Excellence competition

●Capsized, director Lindsay Ryan

●First Zone, dir. Thom Lunshof

●Mission, dir. Paul Wright

●Out There, dir. Simon Ryninks

●Pretty Babies, dir. Tyler-Marie Evans

●Sacred Creatures, dir. Frieda Luk

●Skintown, dir. Kieron J. Walsh

●Snapshot, dir. Joseph Archer