– The recently relaunched Scottish festival boasts 21 world premieres across its wide-ranging programme and will host the inaugural UK Film Conference in its industry section
Aneurin Barnard in Out There
Having moved from its previous June dates to August – when the city’s world-renowned Fringe performing-arts festival takes place – and with new management taking the reins, the Edinburgh International Film Festival is enjoying a fresh sense of momentum, with many in the UK industry bullish about its prospects. This week, the full line-up was announced for its 2026 edition (running from 13-19 August), containing a compact array of 38 new features in total, 21 of which are world premieres.
The festival opens with Louis Paxton’s comedy The Incomer, which stars Domhnall Gleeson and launched very well at this year’s Sundance; the closing-night film is Louise Lockwood’s “raw and beautiful” documentary Bel. Older films will show as part of its Special Retrospective Screenings – among them, a very fitting 30th-anniversary showing of Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting – and an expanded industry programme will run across its duration, which includes the first edition of the UK Film Conference, opening with a discussion between BFI CEO Ben Roberts and distributor Picturehouse’s creative director, Claire Binns.
After US director Elliott Tuttle’s provocative two-hander Blue Film premiered in the section last year, eyes will be on the lookout for similar thrifty innovation in this year’s competition, where ten world premieres will vie for the Sean Connery Prize for Feature Filmmaking Excellence. Among them is Simon Ryninks’ UFO conspiracy feature Out There (UK), which boasts a supporting role for Michael Sheen and a very realistic-looking explosion in its key image (see above). Riding high in many recent high-profile festival films, and with Rose of Nevada now on general release, George MacKay stars in Paul Wright’s Mission (UK); in what sounds like a real showcase role, he plays a young man who “blows his life up” in an immersive, expressionistic portrait of angst and “directionless fury”.
All of the competition films derive from the UK and the USA, with the exception of Freida Luk’s Canadian-Italian co-production Sacred Creatures and Kieron J Walsh’s Skintown, co-produced by the UK and Ireland, and set in 1994 amidst the Troubles. Bart Simpson offers a more conventional-sounding bio-doc with The Mad World of Harvey Kurtzman (Canada/UK), exploring the founder of the satirical US publication MAD Magazine. Also of note, in the out-of-competition section, is Carlos Conceição’s “body horror noir” Bodyhackers (see the news), following up Tommy Guns, which was very well received at Locarno in 2022.
The remaining films in competition are Capsized by Lindsay Ryan (USA), First Zone by Thom Lunshof (UK), Pretty Babies by Tyler-Marie Evans (USA), Snapshot by Joseph Archer (UK), and The State of Us by Ollie Gardner and Jake Harvey (UK).
