2024 Edinburgh Film Festival Programme Laughs At The Face Of Darkness

After successfully returning last year Edinburgh Film Festival for a bigger programme. Today the longest running film festival returns for 77th edition with a programmer that will laugh at the face of darkness.

From 15th August until 21st August, we will be treated to 37 new feature films, 18 World Premieres including 10 World Premieres competing for the new Sean Connery Prize for Feature Filmmaking Excellence, 4 special retrospective screenings, 5 short film programmes including the new Thelma Schoonmaker Prize for Short Filmmaking Excellence competition.

A year that will feature musical odysseys, dystopian worlds, vivid portraits of characters from the fringes of society and reimagined inner and outer spaces. It showcases new work from filmmakers from the UK, US, Canada, Mexico, Norway, China, Kazakhstan, Belgium, Iran and beyond.

Previously announced Opening Night film, will be Nora Fingscheidt‘s The Outrun starring Saoirse Ronan, the Festival presents a selection of compelling new and established voices in cinema including 18 World Premieres with an Out of Competition strand offering additional World and UK premieres.

The Closing Night film is the World Premiere of Carla J. Easton and Blair Young’s powerful new documentary Since Yesterday: The Untold Story Of Scotland’s Girl Bands. Sitting within a strong presence for Scottish filmmakers and Scottish talent also elsewhere in the programme.

The Sean Connery Prize for Feature Filmmaking Excellence, ten feature-length World Premieres will be presented, is fully funded by The Sean Connery Foundation. Kelsey Taylor’s dark psychological thriller To Kill A Wolf, Nina Conti’s absurdist road movie Sunlight. Plus Daisy-May Hudson’s stirring film Lollipop some of the films challenging for the prize.

Some of The Out of Competition film strand include Nathan Silver’s elegantly observed comedy Between The Temples. You Qiao Yin’s compassionate drama Mongrel, Euros Lyn’s fresh reimagining of the vampire genre The Radleys starring Damian Lewis and Kelly Macdonald; and Alice Lowe’s uniquely entertaining Timestalker. Guan Hu’s Un Certain Regard Main Prize Winner Black Dog.

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. There is also Feature-length titles in the strand are Jack Clark and Jim Weir’s Australian psychological horror Birdeater.

The festival director Paul Ridd commented on the programme “I am thrilled by what the team, our collaborators and our supporters have put together these past months for all sections of the programme and across our exciting new festival footprint. Through a spirit of collaboration, passion and above all teamwork, we have worked to fashion something special out of a shared vision for what we want this historic festival to be going forward, and to offer a platform to an enormous range of film work. Since day one, the audience has always been front and centre in our thinking. And I cannot wait to see these formally exciting, thematically rich and unforgettable films to find their audience with us. Bring it on.”

To check out the full programme for the festival, head over to the festival website. tickets going on sale midday on Thursday 11th July via edfilmfest.org, edfringe.com

Edinburgh International Film Festival runs from Thursday 15th  until  Wednesday 21st August.