Edinburgh International Film Festival - Shorts Highlights

The Edinburgh International Film Festival has kicked off and promises its usual array of features and industry events to audiences and the international film industry. As always, the festival has a wide array of short films on offer not only in a dedicated programme of shorts but also within its experimental Black Box strand.

While there is a smattering of more mainstream fare – Doctor Who and Guardians of the Galaxy star Karen Gillan will see her directorial debut Coward have its European premiere – many of the films in the Edinburgh shorts section explore the space where art and cinema interact. This includes the likes of the sixpack represented Shadowboxer (Schattenboxer) (Dir.Jannis Lenz, Austria, 2015) - in which a young boxer skirts deals with his violent nature while trying not to lose his freedom – which fuses narrative and expressionism while also blurring the boundaries between documentary and fiction.

It’s also worth noting the UK premiere of Australian filmmaker Shane Danielsen’s The Guests will occur at the festival. The excellent psychological thriller had a positive reception after premiering at this year’s Cannes Film Festival and it’s noteworthy as Danielsen happens to be a former Artistic Director of the EIFF. Never has the phrase ‘poacher turned gamekeeper’ (or should that be ‘gamekeeper turned poacher’) been more apt.

In the festival’s Black Box section there will be plenty of discoveries to find including in the programme will be the World Premiere of Nick Jordan’s latest film The Atom Station (pictured above). With his previous film The Rising proving popular on the festival circuit, his latest film focuses on the battle between nature and industry in this documentary about the exploitation of Icelandic landscapes for economic gain.

The Edinburgh International Film Festival is currently ongoing and will finish on 28th June. You can find out more about the Shorts HERE and Black Box HERE.