The festival returns with live screenings, but will continue to offer an online edition, with gems from Norway and Iran, plus a 30-year stop-motion passion project
As the film festival circuit returns to semi-normal – Cannes wrapped a delayed but successful edition last month, with Venice and Toronto both taking place as scheduled this September – not everyone is keen to return to business as usual. For many cinephiles who are unable, even under the best of circumstances, to travel to all corners of the globe to catch new films, the pandemic-induced wave of online festivals was an improvement, not a compromise. Expect more festivals to consider the virtues of increased accessibility even when local in-person events are possible.
One such example is the Edinburgh international film festival, usually held in June, which is returning to a delayed live edition this Wednesday – overlapping for the first time in years with the Edinburgh fringe – but will maintain a hybrid physical-digital format. (The fringe, too, is making itself available to digital audiences: a number of its performances will stream online.) And while most of the big-name UK premieres in the film lineup will be limited to in-person screenings, a worthwhile programme of 20 features, alongside several short film collections, will be available to view online for 72 hours following their premieres over the next two weeks.