Samira Makhmalbaf to chair Michael Powell jury at EIFF

Iranian director Samira Makhmalbaf will chair the Michael Powell Best British Feature Film Competition Jury at the upcoming Edinburgh Film Festival, which runs June 19-30.

Makhmalbaf became the youngest director in official selection at the Cannes Film Festival 1988 with her first feature The Apple, for which she won the London Film Festival’s Sutherland Trophy. Her second film The Blackboard and third, At Five in the Afternoon, both received the jury prize at Cannes.

She will be joined on the jury by Scottish actor Kevin McKidd, who starred in last year’s EIFF closing night gala Brave, and chief film critic at the Evening Standard, Derek Malcolm.

British films competing for the Michael Powell Award include Justin Edgar’s We Are The Freaks, Paul Wright’s For Those In Peril, Jamie Chambers’ Blackbird and John Hardwick’s Svengali.

The jury will also select the Best Performance in a British Feature Film.

Meanwhile the EIFF’s Short Film Competition jury will be made up of Rotterdam Film Festival programmer Inge de Leeuw, Die Presse (Vienna) film critic Christoph Huber and independent film programmer Ricardo Matos Cabo.

The Student Critics Jury, now in its second year, will be made up of seven aspiring film critics from Scottish colleges and Universities. With guidance from Sight And Sound editor Nick James, the jurors will write short essays about the films and the festival as well as judging the winner of the Student Critics Jury Award.

As previously announced, South Korean director Bong Joon Ho will chair the International Feature Film Competition Jury, which also includes Game Of Thrones actress Natalie Dormer and film critic Siobhan Synnot.