Edinburgh International Film Festival has announced the programme for its fully in-person 75th Anniversary edition this year. The dynamic programme of cinema screenings, live performance and industry dialogues in Edinburgh in the heart of the August festival season welcomes attending UK & international filmmakers to present their work.
Full programme includes 87 new features, 12 short film programmes, and two large scale retrospectives that celebrate the 2022 Theme of the 50th Anniversary of the Women's Film Festival in new Creative Director Kristy Matheson's inaugural edition. 10 international feature films with over 50% female Directors or Co-Directors for the brand-new competitive section for ‘The Powell and Pressburger Award for Best Feature Film'.
EIFF 2022 Festival Theme:
In 1972, the Edinburgh International Film Festival presented the first global film event entirely dedicated to the cinematic achievements of female directors, curated by Claire Johnston, Lynda Myles, and Laura Mulvey. Honouring the spirit of this original programme provocation, EIFF's 2022 Theme will acknowledge the multiplicity and variety of feminisms in contemporary society across our entire programme with a focus on: contemporary directorial works, two large-scale retrospectives, training, and targeted professional programmes.
This year's Edinburgh International Film Festival programme has been brought together by a team of programmers led by Kristy Matheson, Creative Director of the Festival. Alongside Kristy, the EIFF Programming Team consists of Manish Agarwal, Anna Bogutskaya, Rafa Sales Ross, Kate Taylor, Abigail Addison (animation programmer); Short Film Programmers – Jenny Clarke (narrative) Rohan Crickmar (non-fiction), Black Box Programmer – Lydia Beilby; Retrospective Curator (2022 Theme) Kim Knowles.
EIFF is pleased to be working with its venue partners across the city centre including Filmhouse Cinema, Cameo Picturehouse, Everyman Edinburgh at the St James Quarter, Vue Edinburgh Omni and outdoors with Film Fest in the City in St Andrew Square, to offer audiences a warm welcome back to the big screen.
Tickets are on sale to Filmhouse Members and Screen Saver Passholders and will go on sale to the general public at 10am on Friday 22nd July.
The programme of 87 new feature films is structured across 3 Galas, 5 themed strands, 1 Big Screen Presentation and 10 films in competition as part of the new The Powell & Pressburger Award for Best Feature Film.
Here are all the Asian Titles:
CLOSING GALA: After Yang
Kogonada's exquisite and playful film stars Colin Farrell and Jodi Turner Smith and brings the festival to a close in style. ‘After Yang' had its World Premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in 2021 where it was warmly received by international critics, it went on to win the Alfred P. Sloan Prize at Sundance Film Festival earlier this year. The film tells the story of a family who lose their A.I. helper, and the profound feelings that the experience induces.
Kogonada has also curated Carte Blanche, a beautiful selection of films, offering audiences a special insight into some of the films that have inspired ‘After Yang'. Films in this programme include:
After Life (1999) by Kore-eda Hirokazu
Irma Vep (1996) by Olivier Assayas
Your Name (2016) by Makoto Shinkai
The Powell & Pressburger Award for Best Feature Film.
EIFF reimagines its major award, The Michael Powell Award for Best British feature. With a renewed commitment to internationalism and cultural exchange, the principles on which the Edinburgh Festivals were founded, EIFF will present The Powell & Pressburger Award for Best Feature Film. This competition of 10 films is composed of a mix of UK and Irish filmmakers and international talents and honours imagination and creativity in filmmaking. The films selected for our 2022 competition are daring, eclectic and genuinely speak to the creativity that's central to the works of our award's namesakes – Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger.
Part surreal comedy, part love letter to Filipino action flicks, Martika Ramirez Escobar's debut feature Leonor Will Never Die is as unclassifiable as it is tender. Retired action movie director Leonor is about to start working again on an unfinished script when she gets hit on the head and knocked out by a falling television. Waking up in a dream world much like the macho movies she used to direct, Leonor finds her perfect action star and the ending to her movie in her dreamworld. The film premiered at the World Cinema Dramatic Competition of the 2022 Sundance Film Festival, the first Filipino film to compete since 2006. Escobar was awarded the Special Jury Prize for Innovative Spirit.
Nazareth-born Palestinian filmmaker Maha Haj won the Un Certain Regard Best Screenplay Prize at Cannes for her second feature Mediterranean Fever which charts the unlikely bond between two very different Arab family men living in the Israeli port city of Haifa in this wry examination of mental illness and masculinity. Waleed suffers from severe depression and dreams of becoming an author. He seeks inspiration for his crime fiction in ebullient new neighbour Jalal, a small-time crook.
FEATURE PROGRAMME
This year's programme is structured by strands with each strand having its own Classic Film and Headline film which offers audiences a flavour of what to expect. Our festival framework puts films in direct conversation, encourages pathways to navigate the programme and offers audiences a chance to meet their cinematic tribe.
THE CONVERSATION: Cinema to get you talking
Snow Hnin Ei Hlaing's documentary feature Midwives is a tender and absorbing portrait of two messy, resilient, complex women, trying to get along and support mothers in their moment of need in the context of intense political turbulence and the oppression of Rohingya people.
by Ali Asgari
Ali Asgari's tense second feature Until Tomorrow (Ta farda) follows Fereshteh, a newly single mother in modern day Iran expecting an unplanned visit from her parents. The grandparents however have no idea of the baby's existence so the young mother scrambles to hide all the signs and evidence in this thriller that premiered in Berlin earlier this year.
Winners of the EIFF 2019 Works in Progress Award, documentarians Hannah Congdon and Catherine Haigh are the first women to drive the entirety of Central Asia's Pamir Highway in the World Premiere of Women Behind The Wheel. Travelling for 65 days in the predominantly Muslim republics of Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, they meet and interview pioneering women, including doctors, teachers, mountain trekkers, ale brewers, beekeepers, LGBTQ activists and a Taekwondo world champion.
THE CHAMBER: Quality arthouse for the culturally curious
The Chamber Headline: Kamila Andini has delighted festival audiences with stories of young people navigating the world in films such as The Seen and Unseen and Yuni. For her latest offering Headline Film Nana (Before, Now & Then) which premiered in competition at the 2022 Berlinale, Andina delivers a sumptuous period drama about the unlikely but deeply moving friendship between two women who share a common anchor in the politically turbulent, post-independence years in Indonesia.
by Ali Behrad
Ali Behrad's intimate directorial debut Imagine (Tasavor) explores the platonic relationship between a taxi driver and the lively passenger he is doomed to love from afar. Anchored by a beautifully nuanced performance by Leila Hatami (of A Separation fame), this minimalistic two-hander investigates Iranian gender, social and class dynamics through a tender tale of star-crossed lovers.
Hassan Nazer's Winners (Barandeha) is set in a deprived area of a small Iranian town where children are required to work to help support their families. Nine-year-old Yahya is one such child, his little hands scouring through massive piles of junk in search of hidden treasures. One day, Yahya strikes literal gold by finding an unclaimed Oscar statue, the curious item leading the boy into an adventure- filled journey that doubles as a loving ode to the history of Iranian cinema in this World Premiere presentation.
HEARTBREAKERS: Friends, family, lovers, and cheaters
The Cloud & The Man (Manikbabur Megh) is a meteorological love story set in Kolkata graced with gorgeous monochrome, this is the first feature by 30-year-old Abhinandan Banerjee, an idealistic college dropout turned charmingly original filmmaker. Office worker Manik lives with his ailing father but spends more time tending to plants, pet insects and the house lizard. When his dad dies, our lonely protagonist is given notice of eviction. His luck changes when a cloud starts following him, leading to a surreal infatuation.
Mentored by Kore-eda, Emma Kawawada's directorial debut My Small Land tells the story of a teenage girl stranded between two cultures. Sarya was only five when her family left Kurdistan to start anew in Japan. Now a teenager, she is finally settling in, finding confidence through her growing grasp of the language and excitedly planning her college application. Her dreams are suddenly and painfully shattered when her father's asylum application is denied, sending her family into agonising uncertainty.
Lam Sum's The Narrow Road is a humanist charmer. In the early days of the pandemic, Chak (Louis Cheung), struggling to keep his cleaning company afloat, hires single mother Candy (Angela Yuen). But as the chemistry between them develops, Candy finds it hard to abandon the survival tactics of deception she's always needed to get by. Featuring gorgeous cinematography of night-time Hong Kong, and a trio of exceptional performances in this World Premiere presentation.
In director Li Ruijin's hugely satisfying, small-scale epic, Return to Dust Youtie Ma, a middle- aged farmer, and Guiying Cao, are forcibly married. Beginning their lives together with quiet indifference, the two simply get on with their hardscrabble lives, but as the seasons pass inexorably by, and seemingly insurmountable problems are overcome, a deeper bond develops
Korean-Chinese director Zhang Lu's warm, witty and rueful film of brotherly love in Japan Yanagawa has a stellar cast including Chinese star Ni Ni. Sensitive, bookish Dong has a terminal illness but doesn't tell his arrogant bro Chun. Instead, he sells the idea of a trip away together on the fact that Chun's old flame is now a singer in a bar in vivid, wintry Yanagawa. But the bittersweet love triangle is complicated when the girl who got away seems ambivalent about romance.
NIGHT MOVES: Cult, music, late night thrills
Night Moves Headline: Buckle up for Dae-min Park's Korean vehicular thriller Special Delivery with a lead performance from Parasite star Park So-dam, a female-centric spin on petrolhead staples like Drive, The Driver and The Transporter delivers a breezy action cocktail of cuteness and brutality, its high adrenaline car chases and neon-lit ambience enhanced by a pulsing electronic score.
by Kim Se-in
POSTCARDS FROM THE EDGE: Bold visions to expand horizons
The Apartment of Two Women (Gat-eun-sog-ose-ul-im-neun-du-yeo-ja) is a terrifically acted turbulent mother-daughter relationship drama and ferocious character study from debut director Kim Se-in.
Faeze Azizkhan's The Locust (Malakh) is a fast-talking meta-comedy about filmmaking anxiety rich with fourth wall-breaking references that premiered recently at SXSW and will delight cinephiles.
SHORT FILMS
Short films have always been central to the EIFF programme and this year is no exception. In 2022, EIFF presents 12 fantastic programmes that span fiction, animation, documentary and experimental.
This year's International Animation Shorts explore the pressures of society, religion, economy and history and their influence on our identity and feature filmmaking talent from Colombia, Japan and Israel, among others.
by Kinuyo Tanaka
EIFF 2022 RETROSPECTIVES
KINUYO TANAKA RETROSPECTIVE Exploring this year's festival theme is a major retrospective of the work of performer and film director Kinuyo Tanaka (1909 – 1977) who played an essential role in the history of Japanese cinema. Moving gracefully across genres, these six new 4K restorations of films from Tanaka as a director offer a unique perspective on a nation grappling with the aftermath of war, social upheaval, and modernisation: all seen through the lives of its female citizens. First conceived by Lili Hinstin and presented at the Lumière Festival in 2021, this retrospective.
Please head to EIFF WEBSITE for more details and the full Programme.
