Edinburgh International Film Festival‘s Ed Film Fest At Home, in association with Curzon Home Cinema, begins today with Clemency and Fanny Lye Delivered.
The digital film festival runs from Wednesday 24 June till Sunday 5 July and features fourteen films. The films can be viewed on Curzon Home Cinema and cost £9.99 each.
The full line up and dates are:
CLEMENCY (24 June – 5 July) written and directed by Chinonye Chukwu and starring Alfre Woodard. This award-winning feature focuses on a prison warden Bernadine Williams who confronts the psychological and emotional demons her job creates, ultimately connecting her to the man she is now sanctioned to kill. Chinonye first had the idea for Clemency after Troy Davis’ execution in a state prison in 2011 and spent 4 years researching for the film.
FANNY LYE DELIVER’D (24 June – 5 July) directed by Thomas Clay and starring Maxine Peake, Charles Dance, Freddie Fox and Tanya Reynolds. Set in Shropshire in 1657, this folk horror/thriller concerns a young woman living a remote, rural, puritan existence with her older husband and young son, until the arrival of a young couple on the run who introduce Fanny Lye to a world of possibilities…
ANTHROPOCENE: THE HUMAN EPOCH (25 June – 5 July) directed by Jennifer Baichwal, Edward Burtynsky and Nicolas de Pencier, narrated by Alicia Vikander. This stunning documentary, filmed in 20 countries across 6 continents, documents the impact the human race has had on Planet Earth to illuminate the question: have we entered a new geological epoch?
SAINT FRANCES (25 – 27 June) directed by Alex Thompson and written by and starring Kelly O’Sullivan. The UK premiere of this US comedy drama which sees Bridget, 34, aimless and accidentally pregnant, decide to have an abortion. Needing a job, she gets one (by luck rather than design) she’s not really very well suited to – that of nanny, to the precocious Frances.
YOUNG AHMED (25 June – 2 July) directed and written by Luc Dardenne and Jean-Pierre Dardenne. After taking to heart an extremist interpretation of the Qu’ran, a Belgian teenager hatches a plan to kill his teacher. [English subtitles]
VOLCANO (26 June – 5 July) directed by Roman Bondarchuk. Lukas, a translator working for the OSCE (Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe) gets stranded in the middle of nowhere in southern Ukraine. Life, and the people, are nothing like Lukas has ever imagined before, and getting out of there is his only priority. But warming to his strange new hosts, perhaps there’s more going on here than first meets the eye. [English subtitles]
A WHITE, WHITE DAY (27 – 29 June) directed by Hlynur Palmason and starring Ingvar Sigurdsson. Icelandic drama about a recently retired policeman who becomes obsessed that his recently-deceased wife was having an affair. His growing obsession starts to threaten the well-being of the rest of his family. [English subtitles]
THE TRAITOR (28 June – 5 July) directed by Marco Bellocchio and starring Pierfrancesco Favino. A masterful telling of the real-life story of Tommaso Buscetta, the main informant in the ‘Maxi’ (Sicilian Mafia) Trial in Palermo in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. [English subtitles]
REBUILDING PARADISE (29 June – 5 July) directed by Ron Howard. The UK premiere of the moving documentary, by Hollywood director Ron Howard, that chronicles the post-fire lives of the residents of Paradise, California, which was 95% razed to the ground by the so-called ‘Camp Fire’ of November 2018.
WHITE RIOT (29 June – 5 July) Rubika Shah’s energising film charts a vital London protest movement. Rock Against Racism (RAR) was formed in 1976, prompted by ‘music’s biggest colonialist’ Eric Clapton and his support of racist MP Enoch Powell. As neo-Nazis recruited the nation’s youth, RAR’s multicultural punk and reggae gigs provided rallying points for resistance. The campaign grew from Hoxton fanzine roots to 1978’s huge antifascist carnival in Victoria Park, featuring X-Ray Spex, Steel Pulse and of course The Clash, whose rock star charisma and gale-force conviction took RAR’s message to the masses.
PERFUMES (LES PARFUMS) (1 – 2 July) directed by Grégory Magne, starring Emmanuelle Devos, Gustave Kervern, Sergi Lopez, Grégory Montel. The UK premiere of this French comedy drama set in the ‘nose’ (nez) business. A once-famous ‘nez’ (in the perfume world) sells her extraordinary olfactory facility to any company that’s prepared to pay for it. She’s a selfish diva, but one that might just have a shot at redemption through her relationship with her new chauffeur, a man with many troubles of his own. [English subtitles]
LITTLE GIRL (2 – 4 July) directed by Sebastian Lifshitz, UK premiere. Sasha, 7, a little girl living in the Northeast of France, was assigned male at birth. The film details, with extraordinary sensitivity, Sasha and her very supportive family’s seemingly endless quest for her to be recognised as a girl by the school she loves. [English subtitles]
CAPITAL IN THE 21ST CENTURY (3 – 5 July) directed by Justin Pemberton and based on the best-selling and one of the most powerful books of our time, written by French economist Thomas Piketty. This UK premiere is an eye-opening journey through wealth and power that breaks the popular assumption that the accumulation of capital runs hand in hand with social progress, shining a new light on the world around us and its growing inequalities.
LAST AND FIRST MEN (3 – 5 July) directed by Jóhann Jóhannsson and narrated by Tilda Swinton. The UK premiere of the late, great composer’s directorial debut, a stunning audio-visual, science-fiction essay on human mortality and the end of all things. Loosely based on the 1930 Olaf Stapledon novel of the same name, Tilda Swinton voices a human from its 18th distinct evolution from some two billion years in the future (the Last Men), reaching back to the First Men (us) for help, as the end of time approaches.
