Edinburgh International Film Festival

Disney Pixar's Brave to premiere at Edinburgh International Film Festival

The highly-anticipated family film to close EIFF

13 Mar 2012

Disney Pixar's Brave has been announced as the film that will close the 2012 Edinburgh International Film Festival. The screening will also double as the film's premiere, following a similar slot by Pixar's last release, Toy Story 3, in 2011. Brave…

Shinji Somai retrospective at Edinburgh International Film Festival 2012

Introduction to one of Japan’s most popular and respected filmmakers

25 May 2012

It often seems like there’s an infinite wellspring of Japanese filmmakers revered in their home country yet barely heard of overseas, with every year bringing yet another retrospective of some unheralded cinematic maestro. It’s all enough to leave those…

You've Been Trumped - Anthony Baxter interview

Director of Donald Trump doc on being shunned by Scottish film bodies

22 Sep 2011

‘I live in Montrose and it’s 40 miles south of the Menie Estate, where Donald Trump was planning to build his golf course resort. I read the newspapers every day and I was surprised that the coverage was so one-sided. The other side of the story, as I…

EIFF mark Sean Connery 80th with The Man Who Would Be King screening

26 May 2010

The 2010 Edinburgh International Film Festival is marking Sean Connery's 80th birthday with a Gala screening of John Huston’s The Man Who Would Be King, the much-loved 1975 film in which Connery stars, alongside Micheal Caine, as an adventurer in…

Timeline - Summer music festivals 2011 from Scotland and beyond

A chronological list of the best festivals in Scotland and beyond

27 May 2011

A chronological list of the most significant festivals happening in Scotland this summer, along with the biggest and best from the rest of the UK and beyond.

Physical graffiti as The Wackness comes to Edinburgh International Film Festival

23 Jun 2008

Friday 20th June 2008 saw Festival Square, Edinburgh transformed into an enormous technicolor homage to graffiti, breakdancing and hip hop culture to mark the UK premiere of film The Wackness at the Edinburgh International Film Festival.

Edinburgh International Film Festival - Jeanne Moreau

5 Jun 2008

Born between the wars to an English chorus girl mother and a French restaurateur father, Jeanne Moreau was born to play what feminist film critic Molly Haskell called ‘the glorious fantasy, appealing to both sexes, to men as eternal mistress, to women…

Convento - Jarred Alterman interview

Portrait of Dutch artist family and kinetic sculpture

25 Jun 2011

Jarred Alterman, director of the documentary Convento, takes me round the tie-in exhibition at Teviot Row House, full of the kinetic sculptures by Christiaan Zwanikken that populate Alterman’s dreamlike film. Passing a gang of creepy, animated and…

Alex Zane

Best leave it to the professionals, fella

22 Aug 2010

In looks, manner and content, Alex Zane gives the impression of someone who entertained a passing thought that it might be a wheeze to come up and ‘do’ Edinburgh for a month like all those proper comics. Yet after this insipid hour of all-holds barred…

Andrew Lawrence gets a few things off his chest

The end result is some high-pitched and hilarious rantings

6 Aug 2010

Andrew Lawrence claims he doesn’t have a grand theme or gimmick to his show: he just wants to get a few things off his chest. Boy, does he want to get a few things off his chest. With most comedians you start to sweat for them after half an hour…

The Quay Brothers' Maska plus film without images - HP Lovecraft's The Dunwich Horror

Edinburgh International Film Festival Blog

25 Jun 2010

Wednesday 23rd June. While EIFF’s programme focuses mainly on conventional feature-films, there are several one-off events scattered throughout the Festival’s 10 days, so I decided to investigate a couple of the more adventurous ones. The first was a…

Man on Wire - James Marsh interview

Edinburgh International Film Festival

19 Jun 2008

Philippe Petit was the man who dared to walk a tightrope between the Twin Towers. Director James Marsh tells Kaleem Aftab how he made a film of this incredible feat

Bigga Than Ben: A Russian's Guide to Ripping Off London

Edinburgh International Film Festival

19 Jun 2008

(SA Halewood, UK) 85min Allegedly based on the diary of a young Moscovite who came to London in the late 1990s, Bigga than Ben is, for the majority of its running time, a distracting black comedy. Cobakka (Ben Barnes) and Spiker (Andrei Chadov) are a…

New Brave trailer showcases Emma Thompson and Billy Connolly's roles

24 Apr 2012

A new trailer for Disney-Pixar's Brave is available, revealing a little more of the Highland-set story line. In it, we see a lot more of the dynamic between impetuous heroine Merida (Kelly Macdonald), her indulgent father King Fergus (Billy Connolly…

Shinji Somai retrospective announced for Edinburgh International Film Festival 2012

PP Rider, The Catch, Typhoon Club and more to screen at EIFF 2012

11 Apr 2012

Japanese director Shinji Somai will be the subject of a major retrospective at this year's Edinburgh International Film Festival. The director, who died in 2001, is greatly admired in Japan, and is slowly starting to achieve international…

Weekender - Henry Lloyd-Hughes and Jack O’Connell interview

Film charting 1990s British rave scene

25 Jun 2011

“We’re a bit like a double-act”, quips Jack O’Connell, referring to himself and his co-star Henry Lloyd-Hughes, and it proves true as they talk to me. They’re ostensibly discussing Weekender, which has it’s World Premiere at this year’s Festival, but…

War correspondent Martin Bell to give Oliver Stone another chance

Martin Bell will be introducing Oliver Stone's Salvador at the EIFF

24 Jun 2011

‘I tend to walk out of films about wars that I reported on. I walked out of Oliver Stone’s Salvador when I first saw it in 1986 that’s why it will be interesting to present it and revisit it in Edinburgh. I remember he satirised a female reporter I know…

Turin Horse - Béla Tarr interview

Hungarian director's final film takes Nietzsche's madness as starting point

23 Jun 2011

Iconic Hungarian director Béla Tarr was in Edinburgh to present his latest and reportedly final film, Turin Horse. The film is inspired by an event often reported as the beginning of Friedrich Nietzsche’s mental breakdown. The philosopher is said to…

Perfect Sense an ambitious film that demands a lot from audience

David Mackenzie’s feature thought-provoking and quietly moving

20 Jun 2011

The weekend saw one of the biggest events of this year’s EIFF programme, as the massive Festival Theatre played host to the European premiere of David Mackenzie’s new film, the Glasgow-set sci-fi romance Perfect Sense, on Saturday night. I interviewed…

The Last Circus

Spanish black comedy/horror takes in clowns, circus life, love and madness

20 Jun 2011

The latest film from writer/director Alex de la Iglesia is almost unclassifiable, a love story, a black comedy and horror all apply and as fans of his Accion Mutante (1992) will know it’s this glorious mess of ideas and themes that makes for such a…

Kim Cattrall, star of Sex and the City, discusses her new film Meet Monica Velour

Indie comedy about an aging porn star is set to screen at the EIFF

27 May 2011

‘To have a role like this in your fifties is quite extraordinary,’ says Kim Cattrall, who is 53 and has made a virtue of playing sexy older women in a business that refuses to equate the one with the other. ‘When Meet Monica Velour showed at the Tribeca…

Edinburgh International Film Festival 2011 programme announced

Includes The Guard, Meet Monica Velour and Jack Goes Boating

17 May 2011

The programme for the 65th Edinburgh International Film Festival was announced today, featuring a wide range of exciting new work from around the world. The film chosen for the Festival's Opening Gala was John Michael McDonagh's The Guard, starring…

The best upcoming events in Scotland in 2011

Highlights of the 2011 cultural calandar from Film, Music, Comedy, Theatre and Visual Art

3 Jan 2011

Huge gigs, inspiring theatre productions, comedy legends and two cute little waving bears – just a few of the things coming up in ‘11 that we can barely contain our excitement about

Paul Sweeney describes his show using the medium of marker pens

Board Meeting: Paul Sweeney & Tom Webb

23 Aug 2010

Look at the cheeky wee grin on it. There's a panda AND a bear on this board, topped off with a Paul Sweeney sporting a lovely moustache. What more could a discerning audience member require? Oh, comedy. That too. Paul Sweeney and Tom Webb,The GRV.

Au Revoir Taipei, Honeymooner and Third Star bring EIFF 2010 to a close

Edinburgh International Film Festival Blog

28 Jun 2010

Sunday 27 June. The closing days of the festival are a giddy affair: you realise that, after so many recommendations and bits of buzz floating about, the EIFF has mutated into this Cloverfield-like monster: there’s beautiful people wandering around…

Obselidia, Cigarette Girl and Chase the Slut among highlights of final stretch at EIFF

Edinburgh International Film Festival Blog

25 Jun 2010

On Wednesday night I had the pleasure of spending a few minutes talking with Diane Bell, director of ‘Obselidia’. She’s very enthusiastic, lapsing into her native Scottish dialect in moments of extreme excitement, and talking in what she describes as…

EIFF 2010 Best of the Fest screenings

21 Jun 2010

Edinburgh International Film Festival Best of the Fest is a weekend full of screenings from the festival that have proved to be the hits of the programme among audience members, festival organisers and industry professionals. Book your tickets now at…

Monsters director Gareth Edwards and producer Graham King at EIFF

Edinburgh International Film Festival Blog

20 Jun 2010

Saturday 19 June The days, as Calvin & Hobbes astutely observed, are just packed. Saturday began with two great things: the first was Toy Story 3, which was possibly the best threequel I’ve ever seen (I’m meeting its two chief animators later today…

Ben Miller - Huge respect for the nicest man at the EIFF

Edinburgh International Film Festival Blog

18 Jun 2010

Friday 18th June. It’s my first day at Edinburgh Film Festival 2010; the opening party is a thing of blurry half-memory and the real business of movie-watching has properly begun, but the atmosphere is a joyous one: the sun is shining, and the weather…

EIFF day one highlight is The Last Rites of Ransom Pride

Edinburgh International Film Festival Blog

17 Jun 2010

Thursday 17th June A dirty, filthy hangover from the Opening Gala after-party was not enough to stop me fulfilling my interview commitments today, although it was enough to stop me getting into town early and securing tickets for various movies.

Crying with Laughter

25 Jun 2009

The hot ticket among the Scottish films screening at the 2009 Edinburgh International Film Festival is Justin Molotnikov’s Crying with Laughter, a thriller starring Scotland’s Stephen McCole. Familiar from roles in Wes Anderson’s high school comedy…

EIFF 2009 - Mark Kermode

11 Jun 2009

What are your thoughts on the EIFF? My line has always been that Edinburgh is like Cannes only civilised. Cannes is horrible, genuinely horrible. It’s completely the wrong culture to watch films; it’s a hideous broiling Riviera full of incredibly rich…

The Escapist - Brian Cox interview

Edinburgh International Film Festival

19 Jun 2008

As Brian Cox welcomes me into the interview room at London’s Gibson Guitar Studio, he points out a picture of Syd Barrett, ‘a son of Cambridge’, on the wall. It’s been just a few months since the Dundee-born actor was treading the boards on Broadway to…

Eat, For This is My Body

Edinburgh International Film Festival

19 Jun 2008

(Michelange Quay, Haiti/France) 105min Quay’s semi-abstract look at colonial elements in Haiti is comparable to two 1980s touchstones, Marion Hänsel’s Dust and Claire Denis’ Chocolat. While there is an impressive opening shot that glides over the…

Best of the Edinburgh International Film Festival

6 Jun 2008

When the 62nd Edinburgh Film Festival begins on 18th June it will be more than the just the programme of films and number of celebrity appearances that is under scrutiny. This year is also the first for the festival in its new home in the cultural…

William Friedkin's Killer Joe to open EIFF

The Exorcist director's comic thriller to kick-off 66th Edinburgh International Film Festival

18 Apr 2012

Edinburgh International Film Festival (EIFF) organizers have announced today that comic noir thriller Killer Joe will be the Opening Gala on Wed 20 Jun 2012 in Edinburgh’s Festival Theatre. The film is directed by William Friedkin, best known for his…

Focus on events at Edinburgh International Film Festival

22 Jul 2011

One of the departures the revamped Edinburgh International Film Festival took this year, in moving away from the glitz and glamour of red carpet premieres and must-see movies, was an increased emphasis on film-related events. By moving the festival’s…

Strong EIFF short film programme includes Night Mayor, The Great Race and Pentecost

Edinburgh International Film Festival shorts round-up

27 Jun 2011

Sometimes the short film programme can look like a lesser sibling of the main festival, but this year it was one of the few aspects of EIFF that was in better health than ever. With a fancy new venue in the form of an upgraded George Square Theatre, a…

Ghosted - Art Malik, John Lynch & Craig Viveiros interview

Prison drama cast includes Martin Compston and David Schofield

27 Jun 2011

It’s that if actors of the calibre of John Lynch and Art Malik want a meaty role in a British feature film, the odds are number one, it’s going to have to be set in a criminal world of some description and number two, it’s more than likely going…

Highlights among mixed bag suggest hope for return to cinephilia at EIFF

Reflections on Edinburgh International Film Festival 2011

27 Jun 2011

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. And when life gives you a programme for an international film festival that misspells the Coen Brothers name (among other heinous typographical and grammatical crimes), best take the bull by the horns and make…

How should the EIFF move forward?

Reflections on Edinburgh International Film Festival 2011

27 Jun 2011

When the lights came up on The Guard, this year’s opening film, my overriding thought was, 'that was fine'. It was quite funny and had a good cast, but was entirely unadventurous filmmaking. Fine, but nothing more. As a tone-setter for the 'reinvented…

Calvet - Dominic Allan & Jean Marc Calvet interview

Documentary charting extraordinary life of French artist

25 Jun 2011

CALVET depicts the struggles of Jean Marc Calvet, now an artist with burgeoning international success, to come to terms with his past and, more particularly reconcile with the son he abandoned. So far, so straightforward, but Jean Marc has quite a few…

Bikini Machine compose a 'cinéconcert' score for Desperado

24 Jun 2011

Each year, the French Institute for Scotland takes part in the Edinburgh International Film Festival and strives to bring the media of music and film together to form one piece of intercontinental art. This year, the Institute have invited five…

Troll Hunter - André Øvredal interview

Director of the Norwegian moc doc taking film festivals by storm

23 Jun 2011

Something that’s pretty thin on the ground at Edinburgh this year are genuine ‘festival finds’; films from unknown filmmakers that seem to come out of nowhere and really impress audiences. TrollHunter is perhaps the closest thing to that in this year’s…

The List Awards at Edinburgh International Film Festival

The Last Circus, Perfect Sense and Project Nim among winning films

22 Jun 2011

It’s been well documented that as a result of what festival director James Mullighan refers to as ‘straightened times’, the Edinburgh Film Festival has scaled back its more expensive operations this year, including cutting several awards. However…

Project Nim - James Marsh interview

Man on Wire director charts 1970s chimp experiment in extraordinary film

21 Jun 2011

‘I’m here bleary-eyed straight from four weeks of shooting a feature film in Dublin!’ So claims Project Nim director James Marsh when I meet him, but you wouldn’t know it from the espresso-fuelled 30 minutes of rapid discussion that follows, in which…

Our Day Will Come - Romain Gavras interview

Provocative debut feature from director of MIA's Born Free furthers redhead theme

20 Jun 2011

From the stage of the Filmhouse on Friday night, Romain Gavras introduces the UK premiere of his debut feature film as a “romantic comedy”. Those who have seen his controversial music video for MIA’s Born Free are not fooled. And shortly, that will be…

Oliver Sherman - Ryan Redford interview

Director of drama charting reunion between two war veterans

20 Jun 2011

In retrospect, the odds were against us: Fresh-faced freelancer meets first time director straight from transatlantic travel and at the end of a long day’s junket. Ryan Redford, a 31-year-old director showing so few signs of media training one would…

Hell and Back Again depicts life of a Marine in Afghanistan

EIFF screening of photojournalist Danfung Dennis’ first feature film

17 Jun 2011

History suggests that the constant drip of unfettered, prime-time images depicting death and defeat made a vital contribution to turning the tide of American popular opinion against the war in Vietnam. It’s hard to imagine a similar decisive impact in…

Reel Science events programme among highlights of Edinburgh Film Festival

Tomboy, My Brothers and Project Nim among film highlights

17 Jun 2011

After my fearless leader’s less-than-generous appraisal of this aged Festival’s opening night, I’m hoping to bring a little bit of love for EIFF back to these web pages. Admittedly, the pared-down nature of this year’s Festival is most noticeable in the…

Rabies (Kalevat)

An interesting twist on slasher movie conventions from Israel

17 Jun 2011

The problem with slasher films is that they perhaps have the most rigid rules in cinema. It’s so easy to fall into the standard clichés as set out by Halloween and Friday the 13th. Not that it means you can’t make a fun, entertaining film within these…

Edinburgh International Film Festival 2011 opens with an Oirish whimper (not a bang)

65th festival gets underway despite disappointing opener The Guard

16 Jun 2011

So the 65th edition of the Edinburgh International Film Festival is now open. It opened last night, a balmy, spitty Wednesday evening, with a screening of John Michael McDonagh’s decidedly patchy Irish comedy policier The Guard starring Brendan Gleeson.

Phase 7 (Fase 7)

Dark pandemic tale from Argentina

16 Jun 2011

There’s a vague ‘pandemic’ theme in this year’s EIFF programme (with talks and screenings of the likes of 28 Days Later, The Divide and Panic in the Streets) and Phase 7 is the first to raise its diseased head above the parapet. As a global epidemic…

Domino Records host Edinburgh International Film Festival event

Event aims to showcase effective combination of music and film

27 May 2011

A good advert can, sometimes, sell more than jeans, or alcohol, or cars. Think of the 1999 number one song, 'Flat Beat', which gained enormous popularity after a puppet called Flat Eric danced to it in a Levi’s advert. Levi’s shifted their jeans, the…

Edinburgh International Film Festival 2011: The rough guide

What you need to know about this year's festival

27 May 2011

1 The festival has a new artistic director, James Mullighan, who is from Adelaide. Previously he ran the independent filmmakers’ network Shooting People and was a journalist. He says: ‘Throughout its history [the Festival] has been provocative…

Interview - EIFF 2011 curator Alan Warner on the films of Jerzy Skolimowski

Deep End, The Shout and The Adventures of Gerard to screen at EIFF

27 May 2011

People started throwing around that name ‘curator’, which gave the impression that Isabella Rossellini and I were ensconced together in a hotel in the south of France devising programmes. Of course, the truth was that I met Mark Cousins in an Edinburgh…

Profile: Philip Seymour Hoffman, director and star of Jack Goes Boating

The much-respected actor screens his directorial debut at the EIFF

27 May 2011

Born Fairport, New York, 23 July 1967. Background Known as the ‘character actor’s character actor’, Hoffman has been a jobbing actor since the early 1990s. After playing bit parts in television shows, shorts and features, Hoffman got his breakthrough…

EIFF 2011 - Five to try: Reel Science

Our picks for the Edinburgh International Film Festival's outsider strands

27 May 2011

Oi! Get Your Grubby Hands out of My Brain A film-initiated debate about the growing commercial application of neuro-imaging, epigenetics and other futuristically-named brain technologies. Do you really want to know if you are going to pass on madness…

EIFF 2011 - Five to try: Outside The Box

Our picks for the Edinburgh International Film Festival's outsider strands

27 May 2011

Duncan Speakman: Our Broken Voice Speakman’s project is a ‘subtlemob’ – ‘A film that’s happening in a public space where you’re both a performer and an audience member,’ he says. Still baffled? Imagine arriving at a designated public location, with an…

EIFF 2011 - Five to try: Conflict and Reportage

Our picks for the Edinburgh International Film Festival's outsider strands

27 May 2011

Conflict and Reportage Frontline Club: Martin Bell presents Salvador Broadcasting and politics’ ‘man in the white suit’ says of this event: ‘I tend to walk out of films about wars that I reported on. I walked out of Oliver Stone’s Salvador when I…

EIFF 2011 - Five to try: Nokia Shorts Weekender

Our picks for the Edinburgh International Film Festival's outsider strands

27 May 2011

Vice TV Greatest Hits! The great global magazine’s four-year-old spin-off youth internet TV channel celebrates the story so far. Having enjoyed early endorsement from Spike Jonze it now has a global network of correspondents who report on all that is…

Books on cinema - round-up

How the Movie Brats Took Over Edinburgh, Tough Without A Gun, The Faber Book of French Cinema

23 May 2011

As is always the way in Scotland, summer is kind of here, and now is the time to lie in the grass with that growing pile of tosh novels. But let’s face it, you are going to win a lot more kudos from your film-obsessed mates if you create a tower of…

Edinburgh International Film Festival 2011 - James Mullighan interview

With just under a month to go, the new EIFF director tell us his plans

26 Apr 2011

With just over a month and a half to go until the big event, James Mullighan the new Director of the Edinburgh International Film Festival tells Paul Dale about his plans So how’s it going James? Great – it’s been a busy time for us and we are…

Edinburgh International Film Festival curators revealed

Sara Driver, Jim Jarmusch, Clint Mansell and more are confirmed - but what will they do at EIFF?

2 Mar 2011

The EIFF hopes to screen You Are Not I, the film Sara Driver made the year after she began working on partner Jim Jarmusch’s films in 1980. Given the cool aesthetic of their collaborations, less is more might inform their curatorial choices. A new one…

Whatever happened to the Edinburgh International Film Festival?

The champagne party may be over, but the EIFF may yet rise again

8 Feb 2011

Back in 2008, the EIFF seemed to be in good shape. A new June slot, a fresh artistic director in the form of Hannah McGill, and a whopping £1.88 million lottery cash investment from the Film Council, in addition to financial support from Scottish Screen…

Police, Adjective (Politist, Adjectiv)

22 Sep 2010

(12A) 114min Romanian writer-director Corneliu Porumboiu’s follow-up to 12:08 East of Bucharest is a deliberately paced and deceptively simple police procedural, which unfolds in the dreary streets of the filmmaker’s provincial home town of Vasilu.

Joe Bor

An easy and relaxed way with the crowd

16 Aug 2010

Bor makes his Fringe debut with a show themed around embarrassment, but his collection of routines isn’t particularly harmonious and they vary greatly in quality, the weakest of them feeling like they’ve just been thrown into the mix. That said, Bor has…

Jungle Book: The Next Chapter

Monkeying around with Kipling’s classic

9 Aug 2010

Rudyard Kipling’s fables are part of the collective national psyche, so this follow-up from Glenn Elston and the Australian Shakespeare Company has a lot to live up to. The story picks up when Mowgli, now grown, returns to the jungle to visit Baloo.

Jo Caulfield - her off the telly sketches out her Fringe show Cruel to be Kind

Board Meeting: Jo Caulfield

7 Aug 2010

Another comedian puts pen to board for The List, to draw the essence of their stand-up. When asked how she'd flyer her own show, Caulfield explains she'd point at the flyer and ask, 'Do you know who she is? Off the telly? Well, it's her but she's much…

Taste returns to Edinburgh's reopened Liquid Room

The Liquid Room's Sunday regulars are back

4 Aug 2010

Here are some reasons to attend the 16-year-old Taste club night at the Liquid Room as the club re-opens in the middle of the of the Edinburgh Festivals

The sex-themed shows that turn Edinburgh into sin city during August

Pole dancers, prostitutes and rampant bedhoppers at the 2010 Fringe

16 Jul 2010

'Coming back from seeing the second Sex and the City film,’ says live artist Bryony Kimmings, ‘I was absolutely disgusted.’ And she’s not the only one groaning about the latest instalment of this once groundbreaking explicit comedy about the sexual…

Skeletons, The Dry Land, Get Low and Monsters among EIFF Award Winners

29 Jun 2010

Brit comedy Skeletons bagged one of the top gongs at the 64th Edinburgh International Film Festival awards. The winners were announced at Cineworld prior to the screening of Third Star at the closing Gala last weekend, with EIFF patrons Tilda…

Modern Love, Get Low, Aaron Schneider and the fragility of film-making at EIFF 2010

Edinburgh International Film Festival Blog

26 Jun 2010

Friday 25 June Friday was my last day at the Festival, and I decided to use it to take a walk off the beaten EIFF track and check out Modern Love, a short film made by a bunch of teenagers from Fife in conjunction with a company called Media…

Nick Cave makes Irregular appearance in Edinburgh

24 Jun 2010

No, you didn’t just hallucinate that. Nick Cave’s popping down to the Roxy. This Canongate Books/Edinburgh International Film Festival multimedia event brings the Aussie music/film/literature icon, who will be reading from his novel, The Death of Bunny…

Up close with Cherry Tree Lane, Skeletons and Ollie Kepler's Expanding Purple World

Edinburgh International Film Festival Blog

23 Jun 2010

Tuesday 22 Jun Paul Andrew Williams’ Cherry Tree Lane was one of the first films I saw here this year, and I did not like it. No sir. As I watched the London to Brighton director’s brutal tale of suburban home invasion playing out in real time, I…

Stanley Pickle, Baby and Rita among winning films at EIFF new talent awards

Edinburgh International Film Festival Blog

23 Jun 2010

Monday was quite a sedate affair – after a number of days where going to bed late and getting up early was the norm, I treated myself to a lie-in before heading into town to catch a few movies (‘Postales’, at last, and ‘Chase The Slut’ – interview on…

Pixar make Brave move with Reese Witherspoon and Billy Connolly after Toy Story 3

Edinburgh International Film Festival Blog

22 Jun 2010

Sunday 20 June Edinburgh calls itself a festival of discovery, and it’s true, the majority of films playing here are by first- or second-time filmmakers, and you go into each screening hoping to discover the next great moviemaking talent. But, as…

Sean Connery on form as EIFF The Man Who Would Be King screening marks 80th year

Edinburgh International Film Festival Blog

21 Jun 2010

Yet another early start on Sunday, but I’d learnt my lessons from the morning after the Opening Gala, and hadn’t over-indulged at the Ghillie Dhu ceilidh the night before. Thus, I was fighting fit to attend Der Räuber (The Robber) at the Cameo, a…

Evil in the Time of Heroes and The Extra Man highlights of EIFF screening frenzy

Edinburgh International Film Festival Blog

20 Jun 2010

I was feeling pretty ashamed of my films-seen-to-days-attended ratio on Friday morning (as it stood at a paltry 1:1), so I went a bit crazy on the screening front. At the crack of dawn I attended ‘Mai Mai Miracle’ at the Cameo, a Japanese anime with…

Don’t Look Now - Ed. Paul Newland

16 Jun 2010

(Intellect Press) Don’t Look Now is a work of low-key persuasion; it wants to convince us that seventies British cinema wasn’t an aesthetic dire strait, but a forking path of numerous possibilities. The decade may have given us film versions of On…

EIFF 2010 Ones to Watch

16 Jun 2010

Perestroika A poetic and haunting essay film set on the Trans-Siberian railway, covering the themes of loss and memory, past and present. Filmhouse, Fri 25 Jun, 5pm. The Black Panther Surrealist Mexican noir featuring a private eye, a 1950s…

Nick Cave book reading announced for Edinburgh International Film Festival 2010

15 Jun 2010

Musician and author Nick Cave will be appearing at the 2010 Edinburgh International Film Festival. He will be reading from his book The Death of Bunny Munro, published by Edinburgh-based publisher Canongate. The reading will be part of the…

Privilege, The Squeeze and Private Road among highlights of EIFF After the Wave retrospective

10 Jun 2010

Paul Dale rediscovers the unappreciated strangeness of 70s UK cinema through the After the Wave retrospective

The Illusionist opens EIFF 2010 - Sylvain Chomet interview

9 Jun 2010

The year after French animator Sylvain Chomet knocked out cinema-goers at the 2003 Edinburgh International Film Festival with his wildly eccentric and utterly charming double-Oscar nominated debut feature, Belleville Rendez-vous (aka The Triplets of…

The Illusionist - video clips

4 Jun 2010

One of the most talked about movies at this year's Film Festival is The Illusionist, Sylvain Chomet's first feature since the critically acclaimed Belleville Rendez-vous. Based on a Jacques Tati script and transposed to 1950s Scotland it is the story…

The Illusionist - Sylvain Chomet's animated feature creates an Edinburgh never seen before

2 Jun 2010

Sylvain Chomet's The Illusionist, the film opening the 2010 Edinburgh International Film Festival, puts a vision of Edinburgh, and rural Scotland, on screen like no other. Set in 1950s Edinburgh and the Western Isles, locations depicted in the animated…

Ugly Truths: The Dry Land

2 Jun 2010

‘I’m not a professional expert in post-traumatic stress disorder,’ says Ugly Betty star America Ferrera. On the strength of the popular fashion-industry sitcom, few would have any expectations that the LA-born actress would have much flair for examining…

Die Laughing: Bored To Death

2 Jun 2010

Jonathan Ames is a writer of books, graphic novels, movie scripts and TV shows. He’s just finished a HBO comedy series called Bored To Death which follows a fictional writer and magazine journalist who, finding himself dumped by his girlfriend and…

Combat Models: Jackboots on Whitehall

2 Jun 2010

If you only see one puppet-based, all-star World War II comedy epic at this year’s EIFF, it surely has to be Jackboots on Whitehall, the long-gestated project of the McHenry brothers, Ed and Rory. Set in an alternative universe where Nazis have…

EIFF launches its 2010 programme

1 Jun 2010

On the miserable wet morning of Tue 1 June at Filmhouse in Edinburgh, the good the bad and the ugly of Scottish media gathered in surprising numbers for the later-than-usual-launch of the Edinburgh International Film Festival's 2010 programme. In…

May 2010 News Roundup

28 May 2010

The final phase of a seven year project to convert a former military building in Edinburgh into an arts venue will be completed this month, following a £750,000 renovation. Multi-arts venue Out of the Blue, on Dalmeny Street, offers studio and…

Toy Story 3 and The Illusionist among Edinburgh International Film Festival 2010 highlights

5 May 2010

With The Edinburgh Film Festival 2010, which runs between 16-27 June, only a matter of weeks away, the red carpets are getting waterproofed and the popcorn machines are getting serviced. Now in its 64th year, the twelve day festival, packed with…

Edinburgh International Film Festival highlights

25 Jun 2009

The Girlfriend Experience Steven Soderbergh’s dark and fascinating study of working girls and their credit-crunched clients. American adult film industry star Sasha Gray features. Cineworld, Wed 24 Jun, 9.30pm & Sat 27 Jun, 8.45pm. 35 Shots of Rum…

EIFF 2009 - Fish Tank

11 Jun 2009

Andrea Arnold is a director who likes to work on instinct. She makes films that are defined by their acute observation of real lives rather than informed by a movie buff’s love affair with cinema. The point is underlined at the Cannes launch of her new…

EIFF 2009 - Roger Corman

11 Jun 2009

The Hollywood legend Roger Corman is guest of honour at the 63rd EIFF, which is this year hosting a very welcome retrospective dedicated to the man they rightly call the king of the Bs. Given the 83-year-old auteur has written, directed and/or produced…

EIFF 2009 - Peter McDougall and John Mackenzie

11 Jun 2009

Poor, white, Protestant and on the run from Greenock’s shipyards, Peter McDougall may not have possessed the background to execute the first two Reithian tenets of public service and probity, but he certainly knew about universality. The mythology goes…

EIFF 2009 - Wide Open Spaces

11 Jun 2009

Wide Open Spaces was a co-production between the UK and Ireland. I raised the money from the UK end. Co-productions are becoming much more important for any producer, really just in order to raise enough money to make films. Normally it’s difficult to…

EIFF 2009 - Moon

11 Jun 2009

When Duncan Jones, aka Zowie Bowie, David’s son, premiered his film-directing debut, Moon, at the Sundance Film Festival in January, the critical reception to his cerebral science fiction thriller was ecstatic. Reviewers wasted no time in comparing Moon…

EIFF 2009 - All Tomorrow’s Parties

11 Jun 2009

For those who count themselves among its regular crowd, the feeling is that once you’ve been to All Tomorrow’s Parties you can’t go back to just any old festival. Currently held in a Butlin’s holiday camp at Minehead, Somerset, the tri-annual weekend…

Film Festival Under the Stars among Grassmarket highlights

11 Jun 2009

The Grassmarket’s summer programme is shaping up to show off the area to its best advantage, following the launch of its new market. As part of the Edinburgh International Film Festival, the area plays host to Film Festival Under the Stars, an outdoor…