Edinburgh film festival reveals line-up of stars heading down red carpet

Jane Horrocks will be among the stars heading down the red carpet at the Edinburgh International Film Festival.

Comedy favourites Ben Elton and Rob Brydon will be joined by actress Beattie Edmondson, daughter of Adrian Edmondson and Jennifer Saunders, in the line-up of special guests at the event.

Award-winning Scottish filmmakers Bill Forsyth and Kevin Macdonald will be joined by other home-grown stars like Kelly Macdonald, whose new film, Puzzle, will open the event, while Sophie Kennedy Clark, will launch two films, Lucid and Obey.

Former stand-up Elton, writer of The Young Ones and Blackadder, will be unveiling his first film for 17 years, an Australian-set comedy, Three Summers, a romantic comedy set at a folk festival. Former Home and Away and Grey’s Anatomy star Melissa George will be launching another Australian film, The Butterfly Tree, which she stars as a “burlesque-performer-turned-florist.”

Forsyth will be presenting a screening of his classic comedy Local Hero and discuss a new stage adaptation he is working on, while Oscar-winning director Macdonald will be launching his new biopic of tragic pop star Whitney Houston.

Horrocks will be helping Brydon to launch closing gala Swimming With Men, which is billed by the festival as “The Full Monty in Speedos.”

Piper and Morton will both be appear in new British coming-of-age drama Two For Joy, while will be appearing alongside Frost in Lucid, in which a shy young man is taught to secure through dream therapy and Obey, about a young boxer trying to adjust to life after leaving foster care.

Others invited for “in conversation” events include Oscar-winning actress Anna Paquin and her actor-director husband, Stephen Moyer, rising British star George Mackay and BAFTA-winning screenwriter David Hare, and Brydon, who shot to film in the hit sitcom Gavin and Stacey.

The festival has already announced that Fran Healey and other members of Travis will be at the festival to launch fly-on-the-wall documentary Almost Fashionable, which follows the pop-rock outfit on tour in Mexico.

Mark Adams, artistic director at the film festival, which opens on 20 June, said: “The film festival is renowned around the world for discovering and promoting the very best in cinema and continues to be an important hub for domestic and international filmmakers.

“We’re honoured to be welcoming so many guests from around the world to Edinburgh this June, each are singular talents who will add undisputed value to this year’s line-up.”

Other special events in the line-up of the festival, which launches on 20 June, include a screening of the Steven Spielberg classic jaws accompanied by a live soundtrack performed by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, a family gala premiere of the eagerly-awaited Disney-Pixar sequel Incredibles 2 and major retrospective of American movies partly inspired by the rise of Donald Trump.