10 to watch at Edinburgh International Film Festival 2026

Taking place in the Scottish capital from 13 to 19 August, this year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival boasts a 40-plus feature selection and numerous exciting shorts, alongside hot-ticket public talks and an industry programme. For world premieres competing for The Sean Connery Prize for Feature Filmmaking Excellence (and a £50,000 prize), winners are decided by audience vote. 

Opening the festival will be the international premiere – following a buzzy Sundance launch – of absurdist comedy The Incomer, director Louis Paxton’s feature debut starring Domhnall Gleeson. The world premiere of Bel, Louise Lockwood’s documentary about the late Kenyan-Scottish musician Beldina Odenyo (aka Heir of the Cursed), will close the festival.

Over half the programme this year comprises world premieres (both in and out of competition) and most of those are from early-career filmmakers. As with the August arts festivals dominating much of the city at the same time, audiences at EIFF are actively encouraged to embrace the thrill of the brand new.

Such world premieres include director William Scoular’s road movie Northbound, which features one of the late, great Graham Greene’s final performances, though is led by Bruce Dern, who will also be participating in a career talk at the festival. Other ‘In Conversation’ events at EIFF include Ewan McGregor (with a Trainspotting screening for its 30th anniversary), documentary icon Ken Burns, and Kenneth Branagh, recipient of the inaugural EIFF Outstanding Contribution to Cinema Award.

Speaking of Branagh, his epic-length, star-studded adaptation of Hamlet will get a rare showing (intermission included). Additional anniversary or retrospective screenings include Jonathan Glazer’s Sexy Beast (2000; screening from a new 4K restoration), Hal Ashby’s Coming Home (1978), Michael Bay’s The Rock (1996), and the BFI-produced documentary A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies (1995), presented in its 221-minute entirety. 

UK-premiere sneak peeks of upcoming cinema releases include Gregg Araki’s I Want Your Sex, Hirokazu Koreeda’s Sheep in the Box, Nicolas Winding Refn’s Her Private Hell, and the world premiere of Rise of the Footsoldier: Retribution, plus creature feature Hungry (as in hungry, hungry hippos) getting big-screen play in the Midnight Madness strand before it bows on Sky Cinema in the autumn.

Here are 10 further festival highlights to keep on your radar, even if you’re not in the city this month. More details on these and all the other films playing at Edinburgh can be found in the festival’s full programme.

For those who’ve longed for a 90s American alternative-scene version of documentary Summer of Soul (2021), Tamra Davis – a prominent music video director for that generation of artists – offers the closest thing with The Best Summer. Assembled from Hi8-tape footage that captured the 1995 Summersault Australian music festival, the film features candid, previously unseen footage – onstage and off – of acts including Sonic Youth, Beastie Boys, Bikini Kill, Beck, Pavement, Rancid and Foo Fighters.

Inspired by a real-life label case and the book Scotch Verdict by Lillian Faderman, this film isn’t included here just for being set in 19th-century Edinburgh: reviews out of Berlin were very strong for Sophie Heldman’s drama about two teachers accused of lesbianism by a pupil.

A BFI-backed production, this feature debut by BAFTA winner Molly Manners earned strong notices from its launch at Sundance. Set in a girls’ boarding school, it sees two teenage best friends embark on a summer project to fall in love with the next person they see.

Don’t call it a remake or a legacy sequel. This witty revival of the notorious Faces of Death brand, now as a narrative feature with familiar faces (Euphoria’s Barbie Ferreira, Stranger Things’ Dacre Montgomery, pop star Charli xcx) rather than an exploitation mockumentary, has a lot more on its mind about modern screen violence than most revivals of familiar horror IP. Confrontational and intense, it’s an appropriate closing film for the festival’s Midnight Madness strand, which opens with the world premiere of thriller Bad Day at the Office, starring John Hannah. 

Playing a bullied runaway and the schoolmate who wants to join him, Milo Machado-Graner (Anatomy of a Fall) and magnetic newcomer Jane Beever shine in this warm directorial debut from Félix de Givry, producer of recent Oscar and BAFTA nominee Arco (2025); he’s also an occasional actor, best known for leading Mia Hansen-Løve’s Eden (2014). A twist on a coming-of-age romance, Goodbye Cruel World recalls certain works by François Truffaut and Maurice Pialat through some apparent homages, though the film’s specific examination of teenage malaise feels very much rooted in our modern times.

This South Korean creature-feature blockbuster from director Na Hong-jin (The Wailing, The Chaser) was one of the most talked about titles at this year’s Cannes. A late addition to the EIFF programme, it will be playing in a Sunday lunchtime slot on Cineworld Edinburgh’s IMAX screen – the biggest canvas for a huge spectacle.

Thirteen years after their respective breakthroughs with For Those in Peril (2013), actor George MacKay and director Paul Wright (Arcadia) reunite for this promising drama, a world premiere playing in competition. Set in Scotland like their previous collaboration, it sees MacKay play a man at the end of his tether, blowing up his life in search of a reason to go on. BIFA winner Rosy McEwen (Blue Jean) co-stars.

Set in 1999, this debut feature from Simon Ryninks sees a sleepy Welsh town get stirred by potential UFO activity. The cast of character-actor favourites and rising stars also has Michael Sheen on hand as fantastically-named local psychic Shifty Gruff.

One of the more intriguing world premieres in competition is this inventive riff on a found-footage movie that’s set in the earliest days of cinema. Director Joseph Archer’s debut feature charts the strange, spooky fate of an all-women ghost-hunting society in late 19th-century London.

If we may direct the more brave of you to just one film in the retrospective strand, let it be Takashi Miike’s Visitor Q (2001), long out of circulation since being a key title in the early 2000s days of the Tartan Asia Extreme imprint. Ahead of a new remaster being released on Blu-ray by Radiance Films, Edinburgh audiences have the chance to see one of the more shocking portraits of a dysfunctional family ever to hit cinema screens. Please heed the content warnings. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.

The Edinburgh International Film Festival runs from 13 to 19 August. It’s backed by the BFI using National Lottery Good Cause funding.