Edinburgh International Film Festival: Interview with Paul Ridd

The recently relaunched Edinburgh International Film Festival returns for its 78th edition between 14 and 20 August 2025, with events and screenings taking place across the city and celebrating international and UK cinema.

This year’s programme boasts 18 World Premieres and several In Conversation events with high-profile filmmakers. As always, the line-up is ambitious in terms of both theme and geographic representation, bringing works from Scotland, US, Greece, Denmark, Croatia, Turkey, Brazil, Japan and beyond to Edinburgh.

Following the recent reveal of EIFF’s industry programme, we had a chance to ask CEO and Festival Director Paul Ridd a few questions about this year’s edition of the festival, focusing on what we thought would be especially interesting to our members. Thanks, Paul!

Bad Timing (dir. Nicolas Roeg, 1980)

What was your driving force when putting together this year’s programme: was it a theme, an emotion, an outcome?

What we are always looking for is quite simple really. We are looking for quality, confidence and ingenuity in filmmaking. We are genre-agnostic and we will take any film from anywhere. Films just need to make us sit up and take notice. This year we received over 4,000 submissions, to say nothing of the hundreds of films we were sent via our networks, or saw at festivals and markets before we locked [in the programme]. This naturally made the decision-making extremely tough when it came to assembling our Competitions and the wider programme. Fortunately we work with a terrific team of viewers and programmers from all over the world across our sections. It is that team which refines our choices down so that they are more manageable, and it is that team that bring their impeccable taste and international perspective to the table.

Every film in our line-up needs to count, so when it really comes down to it we are just looking for that ‘wow’ moment, because that is what our audiences are looking for too. And we would not want to disappoint them.

You’ve got some exciting guests for this year’s In Conversation events (including Ben Wheatley and Andrea Arnold). Could you tell us a little more about how this line-up came together?

Ben Wheatley, Andrea Arnold, Jeremy Thomas, Nia DaCosta, Ken Loach and many more. It helps when we have a film that connects to a guest. We are very fortunate this year to have the world premiere of Wheatley’s wonderful film Bulk, so the ask there was informed by knowing he would be in town with us, and getting Ben and his longtime producer Andy Starke together on stage to talk about that partnership. It should make for a fascinating conversation. Then, beyond that, for us it is always about first thinking big, drawing up a list of people to approach, and asking ‘who can we approach and who would resonate with our audiences?’ We are just so thrilled to have legends of British social realism like Arnold and Loach on stage, and more recently-emerging talented filmmakers like DaCosta, so that we get that real depth and range. It is all about celebrating the huge diversity of film on a stage and giving our audiences that direct access to all this amazing talent. That is what makes this all feel so special.

The Wind that Shakes the Barley (dir. Ken Loach, 2006)

Your Closing Night film is the World Premiere of Paul Sng’s Irvine Welsh documentary, Reality Is Not Enough. Our members are always excited to show Scottish titles on the big screen. How does EIFF’s home country fare on this year’s wider line up?

Paul Sng’s film is a really bold and hypnotic take on the traditional biopic documentary, and with a subject as rich and appealing as Welsh, with his deep connection to Edinburgh and to Scotland, it just felt like the perfect fit for us in a slot that last year was given to the documentary Since Yesterday: The Untold Story of Scotland’s Girl Bands.

Elsewhere we have homegrown titles like John McPhail’s gorgeous family film Grow, crowd-pleasing documentary The Golden Spurtle and shorts like Duncan Cowles’ beautiful Neil Armstrong and the Langholmites, plus a whole programme of exciting new films emerging from NFTS Scotland’s new Sean Connery Talent Lab in our programme. We are also showcasing new work created through Scottish Documentary Institute’s Bridging the Gap training programme, as well as screening some true Scottish retrospective classics, including Andrea Arnold’s searing debut Red Road starring Kate Dickie, David Hayman’s Silent Scream, which won the inaugural Michael Powell Award for Best British Feature at the 1990 EIFF, and Restless Natives. The latter two were both produced by legendary Scottish producer Paddy Higson, who sadly passed away earlier this year and to whom we dedicate our screening of Silent Scream.

Elevating Scottish filmmaking voices is important to us, and we are fundamentally an international festival with a global focus. So it is thrilling to be able to situate these Scottish creatives alongside filmmakers from the wider UK and from the rest of the world.
Irvine Welsh: Reality Is Not Enough (dir. Paul Sng, 2025)

You’ve got two competitions spearheaded by some pretty big names: The Sean Connery Prize for Feature Filmmaking Excellence, and The Thelma Schoonmaker Prize for Short Filmmaking Excellence. How important is it to you to be supporting the next generation of filmmaking talent in Scotland?

These two Competitions are the centrepiece and lifeblood of our new-look Festival, with meaningful financial rewards attached to them, on top of the prestige of these ultra-selective programmes. The two selections feature films from Scotland, from the UK and from all over the world. For us, fundamentally these Competitions are about giving a world premiere platform to some of the most exciting new filmmaking from all over the world, providing completely fresh experiences for our audiences, for press and for the industry attending the Festival. We offer something new and exciting in these Competitions and everywhere else in the programme. But we also know how valuable we can be as a launch pad for new and emerging talent. We cannot wait to get these films in front of people.

The industry programme will run alongside the festival; can you give us a sneak preview of what industry events will be on offer?

Alongside our major In Conversation events, we are thrilled to have collaborated with film producers Amy Jackson and Lauren Dark over their Unified Sessions where executives from the UK and the wider world will join us for fascinating talks, panels and events. We are delighted to be welcoming the likes of A24’s Rose Garnett, BBC Film’s Eva Yates, Film4’s Farhana Bhula and Oscar-winning producer Adele Romanski to Edinburgh in August. Plus we will host daily panels covering a broad range of topics, including Animation in Scotland, Access in Filmmaking, Screenwriting in Scotland and Crafting Fear through Games and Film, as well as a case study of last year’s hit EIFF Opener The Outrun, plus various networking opportunities across our dates. All of this will take place across the full week of the Festival in our brand new Festival Hub at Tollcross Central Hall. It is a rich and varied programme that we know will be hugely interesting and useful to our Industry Passholders.

This year, it feels like we’re celebrating a thriving exhibition scene in Edinburgh. How does it feel to bring the festival back to Filmhouse?

It is great to be at Filmhouse for the first time in our new iteration of EIFF, and it is just such a thrill to see that building open and thriving again. There is so much history and legacy there with the Festival of course and we are thrilled to be in the space. It is great to be back at Cameo too, another Edinburgh cinema institution. And it is great to have screens at Vue Omni. Our footprint also includes an innovative new pop-up cinema at The National Galleries of Scotland, and a Festival Hub at Tollcross Central Hall. We could not be prouder of this rich footprint in the city, as well as our continued functional and spiritual connection with the wider Fringe and Arts Festivals happening in the city over our dates.

Which of this year’s event(s) are you personally most excited to attend?

Beyond getting all our films in selection in front of the audiences they so richly deserve, we cannot wait to find out the winners of our two main Prizes, so for us the biggest moment will be our Closing Ceremony. Last year’s was a special moment. Knowing now just how much filmmaker Jack King has benefited from winning The Sean Connery Prize for Feature Filmmaking Excellence puts a special spin on that event. To quote Jack:

‘There is something about the Festival and the philosophy behind the award that has made me feel utterly validated, not just in the film world, but in my whole career and approach to filmmaking. I can’t express how transformative that is. It has been a powerful signal for us to be taken seriously, especially as filmmakers who grafted to come up on our own terms and outside the system, and that’s why I’m so proud and grateful to have won it.’

We cannot wait to welcome audiences, industry delegates, passholders and press to Edinburgh in August.

Sorry, Baby (dir. Eva Victor, 2025)

For more information on the Edinburgh International Film Festival, please visit: https://www.edfilmfest.org/

Featured Image: Bulk (dir. Ben Wheatley, 2025).