Edinburgh reveals 2013 line-up

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The 67^th EIFF will include Paul Wright’s For Those In Peril and Noah Baumbach’s Frances Ha.

EIFF artistic director Chris Fujiwara, now in his second year at the festival, unveiled programme details for the 67^th edition (June 19-30) at Edinburgh’s Filmhouse this morning.

The line-up will feature 146 films from 53 countries including 14 world premieres, six international premieres and 10 European premieres.

Scroll down for full premiere list

Highlights include Paul Wright’s feature debut For Those in Peril, which premiered in Cannes Critics’ Week; Alex Gibney’s controversial We Steal Secrets: The Story of Wikileaks; and comedy-drama Frances Ha, which director Noah Baumbach will present at the festival alongside co-writer and star Greta Gerwig.

The latter will be part of the new American Dreams strand, which will also include Sofia Coppola’s The Bling Ring.

Special screenings include documentary Fire in the Night, which receives its world premiere ahead of the July 6 anniversary of the Piper Alpha North Sea oil rig disaster of 1988.

Jurassic Park 3D and the 1950 Scottish film The Gorbals Story are two of the 21 classic features in the festival.

As previously announced, this year’s EIFF opens with the European premiere of Drake Doremus’s Breathe In with Felicity Jones and Guy Pearce and the closing gala is the world premiere of Scottish rom-com Not Another Happy Ending, starring Karen Gillan and Stanley Weber.

Fujiwara said: “I’m very proud that in my second year at the festival we’ve again put together a programme that reflects our festival’s commitment to international cinema, while giving our audiences opportunities to discover a broad range of outstanding work from British filmmakers.”

New sections

Fujiwara added that the 2013 edition would take the festival “in a number of new directions”, highlighting new strands.

“In our new ‘American Dreams’ strand we bring the highlights from an exceptionally good year for American independent cinema.

“In our focuses on Korea and Sweden, we recognise films that represent the artistic vitality and social commitment of two strong filmmaking nations.

“Our ‘New Realities’ strand reaffirms our festival’s continuing support for documentary filmmaking.

“And ‘Not Another Teen Movie’ is a new section programmed by 15-19-year-olds for their peers.”

Michael Powell Award

British films competing for the Michael Powell Award include Jamie Chambers’ Blackbird; black comedy Everyone’s Going To Die by the two-person collective ‘Jones’; For Those In Peril; Dummy Jim by Matt Hulse; Mister John by Joe Lawlor and Christine Molloy; and John Hardwick’s Svengali, expanded from a YouTube series.

Other competing titles include Virgina Gilbert’s A Long Way From Home and Stephen Brown’s The Sea, starring Ciarán Hinds and Charlotte Rampling.

A documentary feature competing is Leviathan by Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Verena Paravel. Completing the selection are Uwantme2killhim? by Andrew Douglas, based on true events; We Are The Freaks by Justin Edgar, in which misfit teens go on an all-nighter; and closing film Not Another Happy Ending.

The prize for Best Performance in a British Feature Film will be awarded from features within the Michael Powell selection.

International award

As previously announced, South Korean director Bong Joon Ho will chair the international jury and will be joined by Game of Thrones star Natalie Dormer and film critic Siobhan Synnot.

The selection includes debuts from Mahdi Fleifel with A World Not Ours, a portrait of family life in a Palestinian refugee camp; Iraqi-Kurdistan-born director Hisham Zaman with Before Snowfall, a coming-of-age odyssey from East to West; and Argentine director Leonardo Brzezicki, who paints an erotic psychological landscape with sound in Noche.

The European premiere of Joy by Greek doc filmmaker Elias Giannakakis competes alongside Alexey Fedorchenko’s Celestial Wives Of The Meadow Mari, which focuses on the rites and customs of a Russian ethnic group; a dreamlike allegory set in Tehran, Fat Shaker by Mohammad Shirvani; and I.D. by writer-director Kamal K.M. based on a real incident in Mumbai.

Juvenile Offender, a gritty story of family neglect in Korea by Kang Yi-kwan, and Of Snails And Men, a Romanian post-Communist era social satire by Tudor Giurgiu, round out the international competition titles.

Shorts

A total of 172 short films from 38 countries will be included in the programme.

In addition to animated shorts, the festival will showcase new work by British and international filmmakers, including Day Trip by Park Chan-wook and his brother, Park Chan-kyong.

The experimental Black Box strand will present a series of shorts programmes from innovators in the visual art world as well as the world premiere of documentary poem and travelogue ‘10’ from photographer filmmaker Telemach Wiesinger.

In a new move for the festival, Black Box Live will be a presentation of multi-projector expanded cinema artworks performed live by experimental practitioners Nominoë, Sami van Ingen, and Screen Banditas.