After ceasing trading last year, the Edinburgh Film Festival will return in 2023 after all: more here.
When the Edinburgh Film Festival ceased trading last year, there were fears that the festival was done for. The festival’s parent charity, the Centre for the Moving Image (CMI), entered administration and as such, the future of the Edinburgh Film Festival was thrown into serious doubt. This happened in league with the closure of Edinburgh’s famous Filmhouse cinema and represented a pretty dark day for British cinema.
Some good news has emerged though, with a report from Screen Daily stating that the Edinburgh Film Festival is returning this year as a one-off event. Whilst that leaves the longer-term future of the festival in doubt, it at least means that the event can maintain continuity, an essential aspect of protecting its longevity.
The wider Edinburgh International Film Festival group which oversees other festivals such as the book and jazz festivals, has picked up oversight of the infrastructure whilst a core film festival team has handled programming.
Screen Scotland has provided funding to make sure that the festival has returned. A couple of attempts from other backers to rescue the Filmhouse cinema have fallen through so we’re glad that something has finally come off in the continued attempts to save an important event on the UK film festival calendar. We’ll bring you more on this story as we hear it.
