\n\tThe Edinburgh International Film Festival this year celebrates both its 79th edition overall and its third edition since it went through a major relaunch in 2023. <\/p>\n
\n\tIn just two years since it was resurrected, there\u2019s been solid growth at the Scottish event, with the EIFF25 lineup including 43 new feature films \u2014\u00a018 of them world premieres \u2014\u00a0plus in conversations sessions with major filmmakers including Andrea Arnold, Nia DaCosta,\u00a0Jeremy Thomas, and Ken Loach.<\/p>\n
\n\tBut festivalgoers should expect even more this time, says director Paul Ridd, who joined at the end of 2023 to help spearhead the reboot. The EIFF is still in expansion mode, he asserts, and is now able to attract bigger films and names thanks to a growing profile and understanding from within the industry, while also continuing its support for first-time filmmakers (which includes the recently-announced opener, Louis Paxton\u2019s Sundance-bowing directorial debut \u201cThe Incomer,\u201d starring Domhnall Gleeson). <\/p>\n
\n\tSpeaking to Variety in between meetings in Cannes as he tries to lock down titles for the 2026 edition, set to take place Aug 13-19, Ridd discusses his third term in office and the importance of building a festival that gets films seen by both audiences and the industry.<\/p>\n
\t\tHow\u2019s the 2026 edition of Edinburgh looking\t<\/p>\n
\n\tIt\u2019s looking great. This is my third year as the festival director. We\u2019ve been very pleased with the results of the last two years, but I think, judging by the quality of the films that we\u2019ve received and by the films we\u2019ve confirmed, we\u2019re heading into a really, really strong edition.<\/p>\n
\t\tThis is two years from from the big relaunch. Has the festival done what you hoped it would?\t<\/p>\n
\n\tWe\u2019re still in the process of building something that we set out the template for in the first year. In the second year, I was so happy because it felt like a kind of consolidation of that vision, in keeping it to that real laser focus on the competition, and then keeping the program concise. And I feel like this third year is like a sort of expansion on that.<\/p>\n
\t\tIn terms of what?\t<\/p>\n
\n\tIn terms of kind of some of the guests we\u2019ve got and some of the kind of major filmmakers we\u2019re attracting to the festival. And then also with the competition. I think what\u2019s been good is that because we\u2019ve had these two years of the Sean Connery Prize for Feature Filmmaker Excellence and the Thelma Schoonmaker Prize for Short Filmmaking Excellence, the industry sort of now knows what that is and what the opportunity is there, both in terms of the potential financial award of the prize and also in terms of the industry potential. Because you can see some really strong success stories from the films that have played in our festival. Jack King\u2019s \u201cThe Ceremony| in the first year went on to be nominated for a BAFTA and had distribution. So I think for us we\u2019ve built this profile and built this sense of what the festival is and that\u2019s really helped us move the needle a bit in terms of getting in early on films and getting those world premieres.<\/p>\n
\t\tHow has the festival positioned itself among other film festivals? Has it found like a natural spot?\t<\/p>\n
\n\tI think for us the big idea is that obviously it\u2019s always about audience, but it\u2019s very important that the industry is connected to that audience as well. So the vision was always of the idea of a festival where there would be world premiere features that wouldn\u2019t have been seen anywhere else, which would be attractive to people in the press, for the first trade reviews, and also to the industry, to buyers, to distributors, to all those folks. So it\u2019s really just been about kind of getting that message out there, and then defining ourselves as a festival that\u2019s deeply embedded in what\u2019s going in Scotland in that month, so you\u2019ve got the fringe, you\u2019ve got the arts \u2014\u00a0to have connection with those events. We sell tickets through the fringe app, so people who are there for the fringe, whether they\u2019re from Edinburgh or Scotland or from the international world, are able to access them through that platform. <\/p>\n
\t\tI know it\u2019s only been two years, but what are some the biggest highs so far?\t<\/p>\n
\n\tThere\u2019s nothing like the feeling of being in a room with people and with the filmmakers getting their films shown for the first time. That\u2019s the true joy. So that sensation of being in a room where the film is discovered by an audience is amazing. But then also I\u2019d say on the last day of the festival, when we have our award ceremony, and we give out that \u00a350k prize to the feature filmmaker, and we give out that \u00a350k Prize to the short filmmaker\u2026 being on stage with those filmmakers and understanding how significant that is a as a boost to their film, but also boost to its profile, there\u2019s there\u2019s nothing like that. <\/p>\n
\t\tThis is your first time as festival director. What have been the main learning points so far?\t<\/p>\n
\n\tI\u2019d say patience, but also staying focused. I love the fact that we\u2019re able to show so many different types of films, whether that\u2019s Scottish features, U.K. features, films from all over the world\u2026 and we\u2019re genre-agnostic. We take all kinds of different things, and I think there\u2019s often some tricky decisions that you have to make with programming, where you\u2019re trying to make every film feel like it has its own singular purpose for being at the festival. So often you have to make some very difficult choices. But the fundamental thing is that I\u2019m still so excited by it and so passionate about what we can do. We call ourselves the home of independent cinema, and that\u2019s a very important mantra for us. Because being that space where filmmakers have a real chance to get their film seen and then potentially distributed is, I think, of vital importance to the U.K. festival landscape.<\/p>\n
\t\tNot that you didn\u2019t have any before, but has this given you any newfound respect for film festival directors. \t<\/p>\n
\n\tWell, that\u2019s a good question, especially being here, for example, one of the most important film festivals in the world and seeing the machine that goes into making something like this happen. As a buyer before, I was very aware that there was a lot of turnover and getting people in out of rooms and trying to get into tiny rooms and arguing and do all that stuff. But being able to see it from the inside now and to work with an amazing team like my festival producer Emma [Boa] and seeing how it all comes together and how much is about teamwork, has been a real eye opener.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Edinburgh International Film Festival this year celebrates both its 79th edition overall and its third edition since…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":966719,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8816],"tags":[748,1102,123512,4884,712,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-966718","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-edinburgh","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-edinburgh","10":"tag-edinburgh-film-festival","11":"tag-great-britain","12":"tag-scotland","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116590243309740942","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/966718","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=966718"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/966718\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/966719"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=966718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=966718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=966718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}