Edinburgh International Film Festival 2025 programme unveiled

Arts and Culture correspondent Jane Bradley was at Edinburgh's Cameo Cinema to find out and had an interview with Festival Director and CEO Paul Ridd

Transcript

00:00I'm Jane Bradley, Arts and Culture Correspondent at The Scotsman, and I'm here today at Edinburgh's

00:04Cameo Cinema, where the Edinburgh International Film Festival programme is about to be launched.

00:09We already know that the opening film is going to be Sorry Baby, and that the closing film

00:13is a documentary about Irving Welsh, but we are to find out this afternoon what else is

00:18going to be in and what promises to be an action-packed programme of events.

00:22So we're very excited to be going into our second edition in its current iteration for

00:26the festival, with an amazing line-up of films from all over the world, including world

00:31premieres, UK premieres, international premieres, and a whole range of amazing guest events,

00:37including conversations with major directors, but the fundamental core of what we're doing

00:42is our world premiere competition supported by the Connery Foundation, the Shaw Connery Prize

00:46for Filmmaking Excellence, which presents ten world premiere films from all over the world

00:51competing for an audience prize. We also have our Shorts Prize, the Thelma Schoomenker Prize

00:56for Short Filmmaking Excellence, again, which features ten short films at a world premieres,

01:01and that carries with it a 15k prize, again, decided by audience folks. So we're all about

01:06the diversity and range of films and events that we're offering, and also about presenting

01:12entirely new work in these two core competitions on it's elsewhere.

01:16Brilliant. And there's obviously quite a lot of world premieres which are taking place at the festival.

01:21One is an animation by a very famous film star who's doing her first directing. So can you tell

01:27us a little bit about that?

01:28Yes, it's a beautiful animation film called Fae by the director René Zellweger. This is her first

01:33time directing a film. It's a very emotional, very funny, and beautiful piece of animation about

01:39the environment and about world issues, which I think addresses these things in a very compelling,

01:47beautiful way. And if you can just tell us a little bit about where the film festival is going to take

01:51place this year. Sure. So we're very happy to be in the film house again, which is reopening,

01:56and we're very happy to be back in the cameo. We'll be using VIEW for the first time this year, and we'll also

02:02have a pop-up in the National Galleries of Scotland at the Hawthornden Lecture Theatre, which will be

02:07presenting films throughout the festival in this beautiful space. We also have a new festival

02:13hub at Tollcross Central Hall, which will be the site for all of our in-person conversations with

02:18the likes of Andrea Arnold and Ben Wheatley and Nia de Kofta, and also Andrew McDonald and Kevin

02:24McDonald. And around that, in that festival hub, there will also be a lot of industry activities,

02:28so panels and networking events for all of our industry delegates to really engage with one another.