Overview

In its 54th year, the Edinburgh International Film Festival is the longest continually running film festival in the world. The UK's second largest festival (after London) plays host to a vast selection of UK international and world premieres, as well as masterclasses, Q&As, script workshops, short screenings and a delegate programme to help foster new partnerships and connect buyers and sellers in the British film industry.

Kicking of the festival is the UK premiere of Lars von Trier's Palme D'Or winning Dancer in the Dark. Bjork has impressed audiences and critics alike with her performance of a young émigré factory worker who, losing her sight, finds solace in the all-singing, all-dancing Technicolor world of her imagination. Also from Cannes is Wong Kar-Wai's In the Mood for Love, taking the closing night slot with a film described as 'Brief Encounter without the encounter'.

Edinburgh has long been the first point of call for Scotland's burgeoning film scene - last year premiering Lindsey Ramsay's multi-award winning Ratcatcher - and this year is no different. There is the world premiere of the much anticipated debut feature from Edinburgh filmmaker Bernard Rudden, Daybreak. It's a neon noir of a film for the clubbing generation about another night out for a best-of-friends trio, but as things begin to get out of hand, their lives are soon plunged into a tailspin. As night fades into daybreak and the blistering house and techno soundtrack fades out, they realise nothing can be the same again. Also from Scotland is May Miles Thomas' self-financed One Life Stand which, like Daybreak, was shot digitally. The Little Vampire, a Scottish-German co-production starring Jonathon Lipnicki - the child from Jerry Maguire and Stuart Little - is the Families Gala Premiere. Finally from Scotland is House of Mirth, a bitter tale of a fall from grace starring Gillian Anderson, adapted from the Edith Wharton original by director Terence Davies. Set in New York in the 19th century, it was shot in Glasgow and financed by the Scottish Lottery and Glasgow Film Fund.

Also enjoying their world premieres at the festival are There's Only One Jimmy Grimble, County Kilburn and Beautiful Creatures. There's Only One Jimmy Grimble gives a new spin to adolescent confusion from director John Hay. Newcomer Lewis McKenzie shines as Jimmy Grimble, trying hard to grapple with the complexities of family life amongst dreams of being a great footballer. Sadly he's not, and British favourites Robert Carlyle, Gina McKee and Ray Winstone are on hand to help him out. County Kilburn is the rough and ready comic story of one of the 63 Irish pubs in London's Kilburn. Mickey (Ciarin Mcmenamin of How To Be A Rock Star) is forced to deal with Kilburn's eccentric locals. Eagerly awaited is Beautiful Creatures, the first feature from lottery franchise DNA which combines the producing talents of Duncan Kenworthy (Notting Hill, Four Weddings and a Funeral) and Andrew MacDonald (Shallow Grave, Trainspotting, The Beach). Rachel Weisz and Susan Lynch lead as a UK Thelma and Louise running not with a car but a dog.

Other highlights include UK Premieres of Mike Figgis' Timecode and Miss Julie, Paul Verhoeven's Hollow Man, the Coen brother's O Brother Where Art Thou, and Steven Daldry's Billy Elliot (formerly Dancer). Mike Figgis presents a live sound mix of Timecode, and Paul Verhoeven will be in town to give a Q&A. Lynne Ramsay returns to the festival to host a Script Factory masterclass on adapting Alan Warner's novel "Morvern Callar" for the silver screen. In association with the BFI, Edinburgh is also hosting a major Max Ophuls retrospective.

Screening for the eighth year will be the Tartan Shorts programme supported by BBC Scotland. Morag Mackinnon will be following the BAFTA winning short Home with her first self-scripted project, Birthday. Other screenings include The Lovers from Ewan Morrison who made the short film The Proposal, and Rice Paper Stars by Andy Goddard who directed Little Sisters in 1997.

Tickets start at £3 rising to just £7 for the opening and closing galas. Those intending to see a number of films can take-up a 15 films for the price of 12 offer. With the film festival coinciding with the famed Edinburgh Fringe, the Military Tattoo and the International Festival, accommodation will be hard to find but worth the effort, as the city at this time of year is a carnival of culture unlike little else.

FilmFestivals.com reporters
Nic Wistreich and James MacGregor

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Mid-fest Report

The 54th Edinburgh Film Festival opened with aplomb on Sunday 13th with the UK premiere of Lars von Trier's Cannes winner Dancer in the Dark. Although Bjork failed to make an appearance as hoped, Robert Carlyle and Billy Connolly both turned up to the opening gala at Edinburgh's Odeon cinema. Proceedings didn't run quite as smoothly as intended with the audience being evacuated for twenty minutes after the projector broke down midway through the screening. But all was forgotten at the party afterwards where as many as 1,000 people danced through the night in an old converted warehouse on the outskirts of Edinburgh.

Dancer in the Dark was the main talking point for the first few days, though the film appears to have split opinion less than Cannes in that most of the feedback from both hardened critics and the general public is positive. Psycho-horror films feature strongly at this year's festival and Miike Takashi's Audition and Hideo Nakata's Ring Trilogy generated much interest. Audition's graphic scenes of violence are attracting a mixture of revulsion and admiration, responses similar to those generated by the international premiere of Andrew Dominik's controversial Australian film Chopper.

Other recurring themes include football (Purely Belter, There's Only One Jimmy Grimble); reality versus imagination (Angels of the Universe, Nurse Betty, Dancer in the Dark); and experimental video projects where the actor must stay in character for long periods of time (Timecode, De Udstillede, One Piece).

Festival Director Ginnie Atkinson has striven to reinvent Edinburgh as the UK's premiere event for networking and deal-making. The Film UK Delegate scheme gives thousands of people working in the British film industry access to film screenings and the delegate lounge. Given this the festival was particularly pleased that von Trier's producer Peter Aalbaek Jensen - in town to promote Dancer in the Dark - closed a major three-picture per year production deal with Scotland's Sigma and Antonine Films over lunch on the second day. The deal should see the first Scottish, and indeed British, Dogme film released within the next eighteen months.

Saffron Burrows, Peter Mullan and Mike Figgis were present for the premieres of Miss Julie and Timecode. Figgis and Burrows also lent support to the launch of Mullan's latest venture - a short film funding scheme called 8 1/2 that also acts as a training platform for upcoming Scottish filmmakers.

Much of the buzz for the next week of the festival surrounds the world premiere of Beautiful Creatures, which stars Rachael Weisz, and is the first film from the National Lottery-funded production company DNA, backed by the producers of Notting Hill Trainspotting, Four Weddings and A Funeral and The Beach. Other films eagerly awaited include: Kristian Levring's Dogme film The King is Alive which follows a group of tourists marooned in the Namibian desert who improvise a production of King Lear to keep their spirits up; Julie Taymor's Titus; and closing film In the Mood For Love. Also in town next week is head of FilmFour, Paul Webster, who chairs a debate entitled The British Film Industry: A Nation Mourns. All ears are on Webster, whose company famously rejected The Full Monty, to hear his prognosis. The festival continues until the 27th August.

FilmFestivals.com reporters
Nic Wistreich

Dancer in the Dark, In the Mood for Love, O Brother Where Art Thou?, Timecode