The relaunched Edinburgh International Film Festival has today announced that this year’s 77th edition of the Festival will open with Nora Fingscheidt‘s adaptation of Amy Liptrot’s best-selling memoir, The Outrun.
The film stars Saoirse Ronan (Ladybird, Brooklyn) had its world premiere at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. It also played Berlin and 15th August will open Edinburgh with it’s UK Premiere.
The film and will be released by Studiocanal in the UK and Ireland on 27th September.
Ronan stars 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 Festival, alongside writer Amy Liptrot and the film’s producers Sarah Brocklehurst and Dominic Norris.
The Outrun was developed and produced by Sarah Brocklehurst of Brock Media, Dominic Norris of Arcade Pictures, Saoirse Ronan and Jack Lowden, with the support of BBC Film and Screen Scotland.
Edinburgh Film Festival has also revealed the name of its short film competition as The Thelma Schoonmaker Prize for Short Filmmaking Excellence. Schoonmaker is celebrated for her iconic work as an editor on landmark moments in cinema history and for her legendary collaborations with Martin Scorsese, including Raging Bull, Goodfellas, The Wolf of Wall Street and Killers of the Flower Moon. Thelma will be in attendance at this year’s festival.
The short film competition runs alongside four additional shorts programmes, 10 world-premiere feature films competing for The Sean Connery Prize for Feature Filmmaking Excellence and programming strands including Out of Competition – which includes international premieres, UK premieres and additional world premieres, a Midnight Madness strand showcasing the best in genre cinema from around the world and a retrospective strand honouring film history.
The Festival Director, Paul Ridd commented on the news: “The Outrun is a truly special film. Powered by an electric and fearless central performance by Saoirse Ronan, this is lyrical, momentous cinema of real rigour and intelligence, and exactly the kind of bold work we want to champion with our relaunched festival. I have been a fan of Nora Fingscheidt’s uncompromising, emotional filmmaking ever since her debut System Crasher and I can think of no more fitting combination of announcements than this wonderful film as our opening with the confirmation of the legendary Thelma Schoonmaker’s gracious support for our Shorts Prize. We are honoured to be working with such phenomenal women of cinema.”
77th Edinburgh Film Festival will take place between 15th and 21st August. With the main venues including Summerhall and the historic Cameo cinema.
The full Edinburgh Film Festival programme will be launched on Thursday 4th July when tickets will also go on sale. This festival is our other ‘local’ festival and we hope to cover it, in some shape or form.
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