Edinburgh International Film Festival: How the event was brought back to life and how it will take shape in August

Screenings for the Edinburgh International Film Festival will be staged across a six-day programme

In a basement office on Edinburgh’s Royal Mile, three women set about plotting how to bring one of Scotland’s most historic cultural events back from the dead.

Within weeks of the financial collapse of the charity behind the running of the Edinburgh International Film Festival (EIFF), Kate Taylor, Kristy Matheson and Holly Daniel – all key members of the team behind last year’s 75th-anniversary edition – set to work on a rescue plan.

With film fans, filmmakers and the wider industry still coming to terms with the sudden demise of the Centre for the Moving Image charity in October, the trio began examining the DNA of an event that had been part of the city’s cultural life since 1947.

Your Fat Friend, a documentary on 'fat activist' and writer Aubrey Gordon, will be screened at this year's Edinburgh International Film Festival.

Less than eight months on, Scotland’s long-running celebration of cinema is now back in business. The comeback programme is notably smaller than last year, but no less ambitious in its global breadth and subject range, with a mix of familiar figures and emerging talents in the line-up. Films from Argentina, Brazil, China, Denmark, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Japan, South Korea and the United States will be showcased across six days.

The festival, which opens with Silent Roar, a teenage surfing drama filmed on the Isle of Lewis, will premiere a new documentary on the life and work of best-selling Edinburgh writer Irvine Welsh, a hunting trip thriller featuring Line of Duty star Paul Higgins.

Scottish stage and screen veteran David Hayman will be appearing in two gothic horrors – Raging Grace, playing a terminally-ill mansion house owner, and a reimagined Edinburgh-set adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

New films starring David George MacKay, Ben Whishaw and Michelle Williams have top billing in the festival, which will be staged across the Vue and Everyman cinemas in the Scottish capital’s east end. The EIFF’s “Cinema Under The Stars” screenings will also return to Edinburgh University’s Old College Quad.

Kate Taylor is programme director of the Edinburgh International Film Festival.

The revival has been led by Taylor, whose appointment as programme director was announced in March on the same day as Matheson, the EIFF’s creative director last year, was unveiled as the London Film Festival’s new figurehead.

Recalling the impact of the sudden closure of the EIFF and the Filmhouse in October, Taylor said: "It was a shock and heart-breaking for everyone involved.

"What came out of it was an outpouring of goodwill and support, and the raw and honest emotional connections people had with the festival, from people who had shown films or had seen films or even had encounters with people at the festival that had stayed with them.

“It was really cathartic and fuelled our thinking that we would have to do something. With any festival that has a long history like this one, if you’re organising, you’re a custodian. You’re looking after it and always want to leave it in a better position.

Musical love story Chuck Chuck Baby will be screened at this year's Edinburgh International Film Festival. Picture: Carlton Dixon

“We felt we had put a lot of things in place at last year's festival that we wanted to develop, especially in terms of the programme and how the festival interacted with audiences. We felt there was unfinished business, but we also felt a huge responsibility to keep the festival going.”

Crucial backing for an EIFF revival came from Screen Scotland, which provided nearly £100,000 in funding to allow the small team to explore how it could return, while the Edinburgh International Festival (EIF) offered office space at The Hub.

Taylor said: “Both festivals started in 1947 and they [the EIF] were really clear with us that we shouldn’t skip a year because it would be hard to come back. Continuity was key.

"At that point, we weren’t an organisation, we were just three individuals. We literally spent the next five months trying to work out logistically and organisationally how something could happen.

Love triangle drama Passages will be screened at this year's Edinburgh International Film Festival.

“We started with conversations. We tried to understand what the film industry wanted and how a programme could come together at speed, looked at what was going on in others festivals around the world and what the good ingredients would be if you were to start a festival now. We knew it couldn’t do everything that it did before."

The return of the EIFF under the banner of the International Festival was officially confirmed in early March, as the EIF was putting the finishing touches to new director Nicola Benedetti’s first programme.

Taylor, whose team are now based at the Tattoo offices on Cockburn Street, said: “It’s been really interesting working with the International Festival because the timing of their programming is completely different.

"To some extent, film programming can be very nimble, which is exciting and we obviously want to have as many filmmakers here as possible. We’ve learnt a lot from working with them and I imagine they’ve probably learnt a few things from us.

“We’ve really had just three-and-a-half months to rebuild the team, move into new office space and put a programme together. It’s been a crunch, but it’s been done with a lot of passion."

Other highlights include animated Chinese punk comedy Art College 1994, Chuck Chuck Baby, a new musical love story set in a Welsh chicken factory, London-set queer crime thriller Femme, hit Japanese anime hit The First Slam Dunk, which follows a high school basketball team, and steamy love triangle drama Passages and Scandinavian forest thriller Superposition.

Animated Chinese punk comedy Art College 1994 will be screened at this year's Edinburgh International Film Festival.

Tayor said: "We’ve really looked at the DNA of the festival to try to present it in slightly concentrated form, with a bold programme of exceptional films, and local and global talent, taking audiences on a journey that celebrates and champions cinema as an art form, and for it to be a place where essential conversations around film can take happen. Festivals are a lightning rod for ideas, discussion and debate.

"We’re focusing on the depth of experiences for audiences and hope to enable films to shine and get the attention they deserve."