“Rebooting” Edinburgh: Director Paul Ridd Hopes to Take Film Festival to the Big Leagues

It’s that time of the year again: Edinburgh has come alive.

With three different festivals taking over the Scottish capital for the month of August (Film, TV and, of course, the Fringe), the city is bursting at the seams with creativity.

That’s what the 77th Edinburgh International Film Festival (EIFF) director Paul Ridd hopes, anyway. In his words, he’s worked to reboot this year’s event and embrace “the spirit of discovery” in an impressive slate of projects premiering, around half of them world premieres. With Nora Fingscheidt’s The Outrun starring Saoirse Ronan, Fede Álvarez’s Alien: Romulus and the European premiere of Colman Domingo film Sing Sing among the lineup, Ridd has shown a commitment to take the EIFF to a league above.

“The long-term plan for me would be to [look at] the models of the likes of Sundance and Telluride,” Ridd tells The Hollywood Reporter. “This idea of total discovery, using cinemas but also using non-traditional spaces to show films in pop-up cinemas. From here, the only way is up.”

Ridd’s personal dream, he says, is to move towards a structure where EIFF has more and more world premieres and is “seen as a launching point for movies that are then not only going to have a life in festivals at the end of the year around the globe but also have distribution opportunities and be given the opportunity to get in front of key buyers and key producers.”

But with the film festival being in August, Ridd also acknowledges that with a backdrop of the iconic Edinburgh Fringe Festival — a three-week performing arts festival that takes over the city’s theater venues, cinemas, pubs, cafes and concert halls – is a fruitful opportunity for EIFF. “I would say our position in the calendar is very important, in terms of everything else that’s going on in this city.”

This year, Nora Fingscheidt’s The Outrun was the Fest’s opening night film on Thursday, with the world premiere of Carla J. Easton and Blair Young’s documentary Since Yesterday: The Untold Story of Scotland’s Girl Bands set to close. Its Midnight Madness strand will close with the body horror movie The Substance, starring Demi Moore. The U.K. premiere of Alien: Romulus will open the strand as its feature-length titles include Jack Clark and Jim Weir’s Australian psychological horror Birdeater and Damian McCarthy’s haunted house film Oddity.

Ten world premieres will compete for the new Sean Connery Prize for Feature Filmmaking Excellence as the fest showcases talent from filmmakers in the U.K., U.S., Canada, Mexico, Norway, China, Kazakhstan, Belgium, Iran and beyond. The inaugural Thelma Schoonmaker Prize for Short Filmmaking Excellence Competition Shorts will celebrate the legendary Schoonmaker (Killers of the Flower Moon, Goodfellas), who is attending the fest, and introduce a retrospective screening of Emeric Pressburger and Michael Powell’s film I Know Where I’m Going! (1945), set on the Isle of Mull. 

Ridd has worked in cinema exhibition and film distribution for around 12 years, working with various film festivals such as Karlovy Vary in the Czech Republic. The Brit also works with the BFI London Film Festival. When asked to take on the role of EIFF’s director, it was a no-brainer: “Knowing the prestige of this festival but also seeing this amazing opportunity to reboot it and reimagine it a little, sure.”

This year’s Fest is twofold, Ridd explains. “There’s the practical side of things, which is our intent to integrate ourselves more closely into the Fringe and other arts festivals that are happening in Edinburgh during August.” On a functional level, EIFF has been trying to form strong collaborations and partnerships with Fringe organizations so they can sell tickets through the Fringe app for example and take advantage of the Fringe’s influence every August in Edinburgh. “By this point, I feel more spiritually and practically aligned with the Fringe, which is great. Our audiences are going to be seeing films with us and then also hopping into other shows and other art forms while they’re visiting with us. So that’s very exciting to me.”

Also, it’s been simple securing those world premieres. “The centerpiece jewel in the crown, this 10 feature film competition, which is 10 world premieres, all competing for a very substantial £50,000 ($64,500) prize supported by the [Sean] Connery Foundation,” Ridd says. EIFF is trying to embrace a lot of different genres, ideas, themes and audiences — maximizing global appeal — something Ridd believes is “emblematic” of the team’s core motivations this year.

Ridd has put a lot of work into securing the titles screening over the next few days — corroborated by director Daniel Reisinger, who told THR that the EIFF chief had written him such a sweet letter in a bid to secure the Australian’s latest project And Mrs that he felt compelled to forward it to the entire crew who worked on the film.

Is there a film he’s particularly excited about? “To pick out favorites is a bit tricky because I feel very close to all of them,” Ridd says. “And working with our team and selecting these films from our open submissions has been a very exciting process … Securing films like the The Substance and having the U.K. premiere of Alien: Romulus is very, very exciting. But in terms of what the audience is going to expect, you’ll be seeing a lot of different movies from all over the world. I have such gratitude to all the rights holders and producers of the filmmakers we’ve worked with, because they’ve really taken a chance on us and seen what this opportunity presents.”

The 77th Edinburgh International Film Festival runs from Aug. 15-22.