David Farnor | On 29, Jul 2021

The Edinburgh International Film Festival is returning in full for 2021, and will be taking place both in cinemas and online.

The festival scaled things down last year during the coronavirus pandemic for a digital event in partnership with Curzon Home Cinema. Now, it’s scaling back up for a hybrid event that will feature 31 new features and 73 shorts, including 18 world premieres and 3 international premieres.

Running from 18th to 25th August, the 74th edition of the festival will open with Pig, starring Nicolas Cage and close with Here Today written and directed by Billy Crystal. Also among the line-up are Cannes opener Annette, Cindy Jansen’s Prince of Muck, Gaysorn Thavat’s The Justice of Bunny King starring Essie Davis and Thomasin McKenzie, Quentin Dupieux’s Mandibles, David Bruckner’s The Night House starring Rebecca Hall and Kaouther Ben Hania’s The Man Who Sold His Skin. There’s also a preview of Everybody’s Talking About Jamie before its Amazon Prime Video release later this year and a chance to see Apple TV+ documentary Fathom on the big screen.

Only a selected number of titles will be available online, and will typically stream for 72 hours after their in-person debut. For the big screen event, films will screen at Edinburgh Filmhouse while online, they will play on FilmhouseatHome, powered by Shift72. Full price tickets will cost £10 for both in-person and online screenings, with both of them having limited audience capacities.

Other online activities include EIFF Fan Club, which will see some of Scotland’s best-known cultural figures talking for free at 4pm each day during the festival on the EIFF YouTube channel, and free Instagram watch parties of Hearts Beat Loud at 8pm on 21st and Les Diaboliques at 6pm on 22nd August.

Booking for all festival screenings will open from 12pm on 29th July. Head to the official website to book tickets.

Here’s the line-up of films playing online:

The Bright Side

Cynical stand-up, Kate, has lost her way, but she gains friends and a new perspective on life, when she goes through cancer treatment with an unlikely band of companions. Ruth Meehan’s comedy drama is a funny and poignant debut feature. The director draws on the personal experience of herself and her crew, to deliver a believable story of everyday women – thrown together in the worst circumstances, finding the best in themselves and each other.

Available from 19th August

Prince of Muck

Lawrence MacEwen has farmed the Isle of Muck since the late 1960s. With his family he has created a rural retreat, out of time with the rapid transformations of the world around it. Revered for his eco-conscious stewardship in the 1970s, Lawrence now finds himself stubbornly battling to preserve the island for the next generation. Dutch filmmaker Cindy Jansen captures a uniquely cinematic portrait of a place and a person haunted by the past and struggling to maintain their relevance for the future.

Available from 19th August

Bosco

Buried in chestnut trees in the secluded heights of an isolated valley, Bosco is a sleepy Italian village out of time. For the aging inhabitants of the village there is so much tradition and heritage to cling to, but to what end when everything is destined to disappear? Across the other side of the Atlantic the filmmakers’ grandfather Orlando, is lost in the memories of the village he grew up in. Over thirteen years Alicia Cano Menoni creates a magical cinematic bridge between these migrant memories and the fable-like realities of the village she discovers in languid decline.

Available from 19th August

The Gig is Up

So much of contemporary reality is entirely dependent upon an increasing number of heavily exploited workforces, from Amazon to Uber. Canadian filmmaker Shannon Walsh pulls back the curtain on the global gig economy, creating a complex and compelling cinematic essay about the role of work within modern tech-savvy societies. Pitting the ‘blue-sky’ thinking of Silicon Valley against the harsh realities of wage slavery and precarity at the coal-face of gig working, this is a vital and probing account of the revolutions, going almost unnoticed, within 21st century working environments.

Available from 20th August

The Beta Test

Shortly before his wedding, ruthless talent agent, Jordan receives a mysterious envelope offering sex with a stranger in a hotel room. No. Strings. Attached. Initially amused, then intrigued, he becomes obsessed by the idea of a secret erotic adventure and impulsively accepts. But will he regret his choices when his meticulous, superficial world threatens to collapse under the weight of his burgeoning lies? Jim Cummings stars in and co-directs this thriller with PJ McCabe.

Available from 20th August

The Justice of Bunny King

Bunny King is a “homeless squeegee bandit, but sexy,” as described by lead actress Essie Davis (The Babadook) in a recent interview. Bunny is a mother of two, battling the system to reunite with her young daughter Shannon and teenage son Reuben. A broader family confrontation leads her to take her niece Tonyah (Jojo Rabbit’s Thomasin McKenzie) under her wing. With the world against them, Bunny’s fight with social services has just begun. A powerful drama about a single mother with a troubled past aiming for a brighter future, recently presented at the Tribeca and Sydney Film Festivals.

Available from 20th August

Martyrs Lane

After being nominated for the Michael Powell Award in 2019 with The Black Forest, Ruth Platt returns to EIFF with a timeless, emotionally led ghost story. The rambling vicarage where ten-year-old Leah lives, is a magnet for homeless and needy parishioners, who monopolise her mother’s time. Overlooked by her busy parents, bullied by her older sister, lonely child Leah, is delighted when she makes a new friend. But when she is talked into taking something which doesn’t belong to her, she sets off a train of events which may make her worst nightmares come true.

Available from 20th August

Rebel Dykes

Combining political activism, bold sex positivity, and an embrace of hedonism, the Rebel Dykes were a relatively unknown underground London lesbian scene of the early 1980s. Charged with anarchic post-punk energy and a fanzine aesthetic Harri Shanahan and Sîan Williams’ riotous oral history brings an obscured world into vivid clarity. Dropping in on the BDSM night Chain Reaction and pushing back against the ‘kink shaming’ of some within feminist circles, the film is a richly textured and nuanced archive of a forgotten moment and an irrepressibly vital community.

Available from 20th August

Europa

Kamal played by British-Libyan Adam Ali (Manchester-based actor seen in Apple TV+’s Little America) is an Iraqi young man migrate into Europe on foot. Merciless wilderness and human corruption combine to discourage him from crossing the dangerous border between Turkey and Bulgaria. Captured by a group of Bulgarian vigilantes calling themselves Migrant Hunters, Kamal manages to escape and run for his life but the next encounter may be doom or salvation. Europa had its world premiere in the Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes this year.

Available from 20th August

Ninjababy

Rakel is an independently-minded 23-year-old cartoonist (played by artist Kristine Kujath Thorp). Pregnant and too late for abortion, it’s a big personal NO for her to have an unexpected child entering her life. When an animated cartoon baby suddenly appears, she embarks on a humorous journey encountering new people and circumstances that might actually help her make up her mind or not.

Available from 20th August

Walk With Angels

Jerry is a former child soldier who now helps families regain their stolen children in the economically deprived townships surrounding Johannesburg. Polish filmmaker Tomasz Wysokiński resolutely trains the camera on Jerry as he attempts to reunite a mother with her missing baby daughter. What ensues is a labyrinthine pursuit of the truth that marries the murky and malignant history of apartheid within the country, with the relentlessly claustrophobic atmosphere of Lynne Ramsay’s You Were Never Really Here.

Available from 21st August

Mad God

Mad God is a stop-motion film set in a Miltonesque world of monsters, mad scientists, and war pigs. The Assassin journeys through subterranean chambers where he meets a world of tortured souls, decrepit bunkers and wretched monstrosities. More than 30 years in the making from Jurassic Park and special effects legend Phill Tippett, the project comes to Edinburgh followings its presentation at the Locarno International Film Festival earlier this month where Tippet received the Vision Award Ticinomoda.

Available from 21st August

Laurent Garnier: Off the Record

Prior to Laurent Garnier there was Chicago house music and Detroit techno. Both these dance music styles rubbed shoulders with each other on the UK club scene, but it was Garnier who worked his particular brand of musical alchemy, fusing them together. In the process he became one of the first globe-trotting superstar DJs and his club nights from London to Tokyo were legend. Director Gabin Rivoire interviews the likes of Jeff Mills, Carl Cox and The Blessed Madonna in a quest to get to the core of what made Garnier such a musical pioneer.

Available from 21st August

Stop-Zemlia

Beautifully shot and with a lot of authenticity, Stop-Zemlia offers an intimate look into adolescent turmoil. We particularly loved the film’s blend of documentary and fiction, as it blurs the line between the great assemble cast and their characters.

Available from 22nd August

Absolute Denial

This gripping story opens with the steps that genius computer programmer David takes to isolate himself from other people, while building a super-computer off grid. Knowing that the algorithm he is writing has potential to be dangerous, David takes measures to contain the threat, isolating the AI in a local network and building in a kill switch. He works day and night to try to write a safe version of the programme which can be released into the world but as the days pass, he becomes more tired, while the programme he has created, grows in knowledge and logic, threatening to outpace its creator.

Available from 22nd August

Radiograph of a Family

Firouzeh Khosrovani’s deeply personal and beautifully textured account of her parents’ marriage gives a window upon Iran’s societal and political shifts across the last half a century. Her mother Tayi and father Hossein spend the early years of their marriage in Switzerland, where Hossein works as a radiographer. However, Tayi’s more conservative nature yearns to be back in Iran, a process that only becomes more ardent when the Muslim activism she is involved in begins to undermine the Shah’s regime. Accessing a rich archive of letters and photographs, the film is a compelling tapestry of a difficult marriage and a tumultuous period in history, that won the Best Documentary award at IDFA in 2020.

Available from 23rd August

Ballad of a White Cow

Co-directed by Maryam Moghadam and Behtash Sanaeeha, the film is in the vein of social realism appreciated in contemporary Iranian cinema. Moghadam (Jafar Panahi’s Closed Curtain) plays Mina, a widow on a quest for justice. This brings her into contact with Reza (Alireza Sanifar), one of the judges who condemned her husband to his execution. As two lives intersect, she seeks to clear her dead husband’s name. Both Moghadam and Sanifar deliver emotionally compelling performances. _Ballad of a White Cow _competed at the Berlin International Film Festival where it was recognised with an Audience Award.

Available from 23rd August

Faceless

In the pre-Covid days of 2019 people within Hong Kong donned face masks as a means of fighting back against the oppressive surveillance culture of mainland China. Jennifer Ngo’s journalistic account of the protests that followed, traces the political journeys of four young Hong Kong citizens, who are referred to as: The Student, The Artist, The Daughter and The Believer. Between this quartet of portraits and immersive on-the-ground footage of the increasingly violent battles with police, Ngo creates a film throbbing with the urgency of a political moment that could well be a flashpoint for a much wider conflict to come.

Available from 23rd August

Skies of Lebanon

Young Alice, played by Alba Rohrwacher (Happy as Lazzaro and Hungry Hearts), leaves her native Swiss mountains for sunny and vibrant Beirut. She falls madly in love with Joseph, an unusual offbeat astrophysicist intent on sending the first Lebanese rocket into space. This Mediterranean story, set in the mid-fifties, is depicted with delicate touches by French-Lebanese filmmaker Chloé Mazlo, a graphic design student who specialises in animated film directing techniques. Skies of Lebanon was selected for Cannes 2020 Critics’ Week.

Available from 24th August

The Road Dance

Kirsty Mcleod, is a young woman, coming of age in a small island community in the years before WW1. She dreams ofthe wider world and a life away from the harsh land and strict religion of her island home. Tragedy strikes twice, once when she is violently attacked at a village party and once again, when her boyfriend is sent to war. Inspired by a true story, the film offers a believable window on the rhythms of Hebridean island life at the turn of the twentieth century.

Available from 24th August

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