Dive into the 2024 Film Festival

Edinburgh International Film Festival (EIFF) will open it's 77th edition with the UK premiere of Nora Fingscheidt’s Orkney-set drama The Outrun, an adaptation of Amy Liptrot’s best-selling memoir of the same name.

The Outrun stars Saoirse Ronan (Ladybird, Brooklyn) as a young woman who finds herself washed up back home on the Scottish islands of Orkney as she battles to rebuild her life after a decade of addiction.  Ronan, who also co-produced the film, will join filmmaker Nora Fingscheidt (System Crasher) in attendance at this year’s EIFF, alongside writer Amy Liptrot and the film’s producers Sarah Brocklehurst and Dominic Norris. The film had its world premiere at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, and will be released by STUDIOCANAL in the UK and Ireland on September 27, 2024.

We are delighted to partner with the acclaimed podcast Girls On Film to bring you the Closing Night film for this year’s Festival, which will be the World Premiere of Carla J. Easton and Blair Young’s new music documentary Since Yesterday: The Untold Story Of Scotland’s Girl Bands.

The revealing, funny and enraging documentary tracks the history of Scottish girl bands from the 1960s to the present. This scrapbook panorama view of Scottish pop music explores bands, cliques and movements that emerged in the country across the decades, exposing the challenges faced in a male dominated world.

Co-directed by musician Carla J. Easton (shortlisted for Scottish Album of the Year and member of all girl band TeenCanteen) and prominent Scottish director Blair Young; the film is produced by producer/filmmaker Miranda Stern (Scottish Documentary Institute’s New Voices 2020) and the award-winning production company Forest of Black.

Ten feature-length World Premieres will be presented, with the winning filmmaker being awarded £50,000 to support their future projects. Decided on by an audience vote, the winner will be announced at the end of the Festival and the award is fully funded by The Sean Connery Foundation, an organisation which shares our commitment to providing a world-class platform for new talent in the heart of Scotland. The 10 competition films are

1. Arash Rakhsha’s urgent documentary All The Mountains Give - A powerful drama about the Kolbari trade between the Kurdish cities and towns of Iran and borders of Iraq, the film follows friends Hamid and Yasser as they balance fragile work and family lives;
2. Jack King’s powerful Yorkshire-set drama The Ceremony - A fight over stolen property and a tragic death brings together two very different men in a quest to bury a body in this odyssey across the Yorkshire landscape;
3. Mary Jiménez and Bénédicte Liénard’s richly poetic Fugue (Fuga) - A richly poetic film about a young person journeying to bury their lover in the heart of the Peruvian jungle. Slow revelations begin to paint a picture of the deceased and a life before as we learn of a troubling past haunted by intimidation and violence;
4. Will Seefried’s haunting queer drama Lilies Not For Me - Told in elegant flashback, two men wrestle with their sexuality in a repressive English society of the 1920s. Exploring a neglected period in queer history, this drama is defined by a haunting mix of romanticism and unflinching horror;
5. Daisy-May Hudson’s stirring film Lollipop - A stirring drama about a mother desperate to maintain custody of her children following her release from prison. When things seem dark for Molly (Posy Sterling), an encounter with an old friend may spark something new;
6. Abdolreza Kahani’s subversive comedy drama A Shrine - A mobile religious shine acts as a get-rich-quick scheme for an ambitious man. But there may be consequences... This subversive comedy drama doubles as an intriguing window into the diasporic Iranian community in Montreal;
7. Bryan Carberry’s clear-eyed take on artificial intelligence smiles and kisses you - The relationship between a man and his life-size AI-operated doll is explored in this touching documentary. A clear eyed and open hearted take on machine learning and love, in an age of algorithmic dating apps;
8. Nina Conti’s absurdist road movie Sunlight - A darkly comedic, subversive and uniquely realised road trip film. A woman escaping a toxic relationship ends up on the road in a monkey suit with a man seeking retribution from his dead father;
9. Kelsey Taylor’s dark psychological thriller To Kill A Wolf - Reimagining the classic fable Little Red Riding Hood, a young girl is discovered in the snowy Oregon landscapes by a social pariah. This eerie psychological drama explores trauma, grief and redemption in a dangerous world;
10. and Manuela Irene’s delicately moving Xibalba Monster (Monstruo de Xibalba) - A delicate portrait of a young Mexican boy who wants to know what happens when we die. The boy forms an unlikely friendship with a local hermit whose inconceivable age and ailing health feeds his curiosity along with the world around him, which is full of mystery and intrigue.

Tales of healing, justice and revolution fuel this year’s Out of Competition feature-length films. Aligning with our sister summer festivals, we platform titles which speak to a range of art forms and experiences. This showcase of World and UK Premieres feature starkly honest documentaries, stories of human connection and reimagined takes on classic genres.

The Out of Competition films include Sophie Fiennes’s immersive documentary about theatre-makers Cheek by Jowl and The Scottish Play in Acting; Halfdan Ullmann Tønde’s Camera D’Or Winner Armand featuring Renate Reinsve; Silje Evensmo Jacobsen’s Sundance Grand Jury prize winning documentary A New Kind of Wilderness; Greg Kwedar’s transcendent prison drama Sing Sing; Adilkhan Yerzhanov’s brutal take on classic Western and Samurai films Steppenwolf; Polly Steele’s starkly honest documentary The Mountain Within Me; and Euros Lyn’s fresh reimagining of the vampire genre The Radleys, starring Damian Lewis and Kelly Macdonald.

From unsettling wooden mannequins to a stag-do gone horribly wrong, our brand-new Midnight Madness programme will take you on a wild ride though an uncanny selection of films. All of the screenings will be introduced, and most screen with a complimenting short, meaning you’ll have even more of a reason to burn the midnight oil with us.

Bookending the new Midnight Madness strand and unleashing the best in genre cinema from around the world is the UK Premiere of Fede Álvarez’s Alien: Romulus and the UK Premiere of Coralie Fargeat’s celebrated new body horror The Substance. 

Feature-length titles in the strand are Jack Clark and Jim Weir’s Australian psychological horror Birdeater; Kit Redstone and Arran Shearing’s enigmatic and unexpected King Baby; Damian Mc Carthy’s dread-inducing haunted house story Oddity, co-presented by The Evolution of Horror Podcast; and James Clarke and Daniel Shephard’s adrenaline fuelled thriller Sunray: Fallen Soldier which stars a cast of former Royal Marine Commandos.

The Thelma Schoonmaker Prize for Short Filmmaking Excellence Competition presents the World Premieres of new exciting work from Scotland, the UK and International filmmakers. The shorts in competition are Lisa Clarkson’s starkly realist Paternal Advice; Jamie Di Spirito’s powerful Homework; Gavin Reid’s quirky and poignant documentary My Dad and the Volcano; Liberty Smith’s experimental documentary My Exploding House; Max Olson’s bold and haunting Nico; Trevor Neuhoff’s moving spin on classic noir Manny Wolfe; Inés Villanueva’s beautiful Argentine comedy Shoal (Cardumen); and Wilma Smith’s Jubilee which blends live-action with napkin-based stop-motion animation.

These shorts run alongside freshly commissioned documentaries in the Bridging The Gap Documentary Short Films programme. The Experimental Shorts strand presents UK premieres of new shorts from around the world and a new Animation Shorts programme will be screened alongside a programme of Out Of Competition Shorts In Association with Screen Academy Scotland.

• Alongside the presentation of the inaugural Thelma Schoonmaker Prize for Short Filmmaking Excellence Competition Shorts, the legendary Thelma Schoonmaker will attend the Festival and introduce a retrospective screening of Emeric Pressburger and Michael Powell’s much loved film I Know Where I’m Going! (1945) set on the Isle of Mull.
• Retrospective screenings of the work of cult auteur Brian De Palma include a special presentation of The Untouchables (1987), presented by The Sean Connery Foundation, and a 50th anniversary screening of his no-holds-barred rock horror musical Phantom of the Paradise (1974).
• Master provocateur Gaspar Noé (Irreversible, Climax, Enter The Void) will attend the Festival for a special In Conversation event discussing his career and filmmaking, ahead of presenting a screening of Dario Argento’s horror masterpiece SUSPIRIA (1977).
• Lynda Myles Celebrates is a new special screening showcase for a visionary new work of cinema in the pioneering spirit of writer, academic and former EIFF director Lynda Myles. This year’s film is the World Premiere of Argentinian filmmaker Axel Cheb Terrab’s film Gala & Kiwi which will be presented to audiences by Lynda.