The key thing about this year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival is the fact that it exists at all. After the shock collapse of Centre for the Moving Image, its parent charity in October 2022 (the year of the festival’s 75th anniversary), fears for its future were very real. But in 2023 the Edinburgh International Festival stepped in to host a mini EIFF to keep the flame burning. And now, in 2024, it’s back “rebooted, relaunched and revitalised,” according to its new director Paul Ridd.
The EIFF is not Berlin, Cannes or Venice. The latter, which kicks off at the end of the month, has announced it will be screening new films from Pedro Almodovar, Luca Guadagnino, Justin Kurzel, Walter Salles and Todd Phillips’s Joker: Folie a Deux. Edinburgh’s offering is less showy but that doesn’t mean there aren’t treats to be found.
All eyes will be on opening film The Outrun, starring Saoirse Ronan, an adaptation of Amy Liptrot’s Orcadian memoir and a late-night screening of Fede Alvarez’s Alien: Romulus, both UK premieres. But what else catches the eye in this year’s programme? Here are 10 films that should be worth catching.
To Kill a Wolf
There are 10 films - all world premieres at EIFF - in competition for the new Sean Connery Prize established by The Sean Connery Foundation, ranging from Iranian comedy (A Shrine) to Nina Conti’s directorial debut, Sunlight, a road movie in which Conti dresses up in a monkey suit. But look out for Kelsey Taylor’s full-length directorial debut, To Kill A Wolf, which retells the story of Little Red Riding Hood as a psychodrama set in the snows of Oregon. Taylor’s short film work - including Alien: Specimen - has shown she can tell a story succinctly and effectively. It will be fascinating to see how she fares with a bigger canvas.
August 18, Cameo 1, 9.45pm; August 19, 50 George Sq, 11am, Inspace, 6pm & Summerhall, 8.45pm
Lollipop
Another world premiere is Daisy-May Hudson’s raw, punchy drama about a mother (played with real fire by Posy Sterling) trying to regain custody of her kids after a spell in prison. It’s a raw, painful film that feels like a Cathy Come Home for the 21st century at points. But ultimately it is a hymn to female resilience, all played out on Sterling’s expressive face. There are a lot of tears shed during this movie. Some of them may well be yours.
August 20, Cameo 1, 6.30pm & Summerhall, 9pm; August 21, Inspace, 10am & 50 George Square, 12.30pm
Phantom of the Paradise
Retrospective screenings at this year’s EIFF include Dario Argento’s operatic horror movie Suspiria (the choice of guest Gaspar Noe), and Powell and Pressburger’s I Know Where I’m Going, the greatest Scottish film ever made, or at least the greatest movie ever made in Scotland, in honour of the legendary film editor -and Michael Powell’s wife - Thelma Schoonmaker, who will also be in attendance.
But it’s the 50th anniversary showing of Brian De Palma’s Phantom of the Paradise that I’d most love to see again.
In their seminal 1979 book The Movie Brats the first thing Michael Pye and Lynda Miles say about its director is: “Brian De Palma is a cold and calculating director.” This is not an uncommon view. In his Biographical Dictionary of Film, David Thomson writes De Palma off as “the epitome of mindless style and excitement swamping taste or character.”
Some of us don’t have a problem with mindless style and excitement, though. Enough to overlook the occasional excess. (The misogyny may be another matter).
Phantom of the Paradise is a conflation of Gaston Leroux’s Phantom of the Opera story and the Faust myth, set against a rock backdrop (the film plays around with 1950s rock and roll, Beach Boys-style songs and a touch of Glam; all the music is provided by Paul Williams who is also one of its stars).
Some of its stereotypes are dated now, but the film has a gleeful swing to it that even forced Thomson to admit it may be De Palma’s best movie. It stars Jessica Harper who also appears in Suspiria.
August 18, Summerhall, 10.45pm
A Sudden Glimpse to Deeper Things
Fresh from winning the Crystal Globe at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival, Edinburgh-based filmmaker Mark Cousins brings his new film home for its UK Premiere. A Sudden Glimpse to Deeper Things is a documentary about the Scottish artist Wilhelmina Barns-Graham who died in St Andrews in 2004. Narrated by Tilda Swinton it attempts to offer us an intimate glimpse into the artist’s creativity.
August 21, Cameo 1, 1pm
Timestalker
Alice Lowe’s time-travelling romantic comedy (with a few gruesome deaths thrown in) sees its director and star get to wear an impressive array of period costumes as she chases Aneurin Barnard from late 17th-century Scotland to 1980s New York (albeit shot in Wales). A reminder that there is more to British cinema than Loachian social realism.
August 17, Cameo 1, 6.30pm & Cameo 2, 6.50pm; August 18, Summerhall, 4.45pm; August 19, 50 George Sq, 6.45pm; August 21, Summerhall, 3.30pm
The Substance
Coralie Fargeat’s body horror movie gets a sneak preview at Edinburgh before its September release as part of the EIFF’s Midnight Madness strand. The film in which a Hollywood superstar, played by a game Demi Moore, is given the chance to be a younger version of herself (in this case, Margaret Qualley). There are, inevitably, consequences. The film drew mixed reviews at Cannes, though anything that can be described as “magnificently tasteless” seems worth a viewing.
August 20, Cameo 1, 11.59pm; August 21, Inspace, 3pm
A New Kind of Wilderness
This may be one of the smallest, quietest films in the festival but it’s no less affecting for all that. Director Silje Evensmo Jacobsen’s movie begins with what seems like an advertorial for a fluffy, Benetton-coloured off-grid Norwegian life. But within a few moments whatever preconceptions that may prompt are ripped up when the tree-hugging family at the centre of the story suffer a loss that threatens to tear it apart. What follows is an intimate family portrait and a vision of everyday grief. Jacobsen’s approach is anti-dramatic in both the filming and editing, and yet,inevitably, the drama of the situation keeps seeping in.
August 16, Cameo 1, 1.15pm; August 17, 50 George Sq, 3.30pm & Summerhall, 8.30pm; August 18, Inspace, 12.30pm
Black Dog
Or one man and his dog in China. Shot in the Gobi desert, director Guan Hu’s drama is an arthouse buddy movie, though in this case one of the buddies is a mangy greyhound. The other is a taciturn ex-con played by Eddie Peng who finds himself rounding up unregistered dogs ahead of the 2008 Olympics. Their connection is at the heart of this handsomely shot noirish heartwarmer.
August 16, Cameo 2, 6.15pm; August 17, Cameo 1, 1.15pm; August 18, Cameo 2, 6.30pm
The Radleys
Based on the Matt Haig novel The Midnight Library, Euros Lyn’s new film (with a script by Jo Brand and Talitha Stevenson) sees star Kelly Macdonald return to the Film Festival in tandem with co-star Damian Lewis for its world premiere. Lyn, who has a strong pedigree as a TV director, working on the likes of Happy Valley and Heartstopper, follows up his 2020 film Dream Horse with this story of a vampire family in suburban England.
August 20, Cameo 1, 9pm; August 20, 9.20pm, Cameo 2; August 21, 50 George Sq, 3.15pm; August 21, Inspace, 9pm
Oddity
And while we’re talking horror, this Irish haunted house story which will receive its UK premiere as part of Midnight Madness, has already been drawing praise. According to Sheila O’Malley on rogerebert.com it’s a “murder-mystery, a supernatural horror, and a home invasion thriller, all mixed together.” That’s most bases covered then.
August 16, Cameo 1 & 2, 11.59pm
For further information visit eif.co.uk
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