Edinburgh Film Festival Boss Paul Ridd on Resurrecting Shuttered Event

Less than two years ago, it looked like the Edinburgh International Film Festival — the world’s oldest continually running film festival — was no more. In October 2022, just two months after its 75^th edition, its organizer Centre for the Moving Image went into administration, while its main venue the Filmhouse cinema closed its doors under pressure from rising costs and reduced trade in the wake of the pandemic. Just a few months later, creative director Kristy Matheson fled south to head up the BFI London Film Festival. All was — seemingly — lost.

But life was quickly breathed back into the festival’s aged bones. First came a one-off iteration in August 2023 backed by local body Screen Scotland, which then hired “Trainspotting” producer and frequent Alex Garland collaborator Andrew Macdonald to lead a new company to pick up the pieces and start afresh. Later in 2023, Paul Ridd, head of acquisitions at Picturehouse Entertainment, was brought on board as the director, relocating from London to north of the border to take up the role. 

For his first revamped Edinburgh Film Festival, which kicks off Aug. 15, Ridd and his team have assembled an impressive array of big name films and talent. Opening the event is the U.K. premiere of Saoirse Ronan-led drama “The Outrun,” which amassed acclaim in Sundance and Berlin and early Oscar buzz for Ronan. Edinburgh is also getting the first U.K. screening of Fede Alvarez’ new sci-fi franchise entry “Alien: Romulus,” while there are numerous world premieres across both features and short films. On the industry side, there’s a keynote industry address from Garland (speaking to Macdonald) and in conversation events with legendary editor Thelma Schoonmaker and French auteur Gaspar Noé.

As Ridd tells Variety from Scotland, it’s all about trying to turn Edinburgh into a destination festival that attracts people from across the board as well as a discovery festival where new talent can be found — and also hopefully changing the SEO when it comes to his name.

We all saw the headlines back in 2022 about the festival shutting its door. In a nutshell, what’s happened since then to get us to where we are now with this new, rejuvenated event?

What we’ve had to do is build up a completely new organization from the ground up. So when I came into this post at the end of last year, our board including Adam MacDonald, Amy Jackson and Peter Rice had sort of come together to build something out of the remains of what was left from the previous CMI (Center fot the Moving Image) and the festival that had existed under the auspices of the International Festival last year, which was a sort of temporary addition. But we have actually tried to take advantage of the situation by almost starting from scratch to build something that’s a bit new and a bit different, but honors all that history. So we’ve tried to integrate more closely into the Fringe and take advantage of the fact that we’re in that August time of the year and really collaborating with the creative arts festival happening around us.

So what are the newer elements? What should those who have been to the festival previously expect from the revamped festival?

What they’ll be getting is the same extremely high standard of curation and film choices, and that broad range of international cinema that you would expect from a proper international film festival. But I suppose what we’ve done, on a kind of operational level, is form partnerships with the Fringe and with Fringe organizations to run new pop-up spaces in addition to the cinema screenings that we’re doing. 

So is it a bigger festival in terms of what you’re offering?

It’s not bigger in terms of the number of films. But in terms of the ambition of it, we have the centerpiece of the festival, which is the Sean Connery prize for filmmaking excellence. So there are 10 world premiere features that are competing for that prize. And then we have the Thelma Schoonmaker prize for short filmmaking excellence, which again is all world premieres competing for substantial financial rewards. So those two competitions are kind of the lifeblood of what we’re trying to do on a programming level, to present work that has not been seen anywhere else in the world. And then we’ve leaned into the idea of world premiere status as a driving force of the festival. So around half the program is world premieres. The idea being that, in the future we want to grow the festival, not necessarily in terms of the number of films we show, but getting more world premieres and getting more completely exclusive events.

Given that you’re dealing with films that haven’t been seen before, is it easy to take off your previous buyer’s hat and think about their potential for acquisition?

I don’t necessarily completely take off the buyer’s hat, because what I’ve been thinking about with this festival is that we want to create a space for films that are appealing to audiences. And that’s the core tenet of the thing. Also, I’ve been thinking all along about what is it that’s going to appeal to press and what is it that’s going to appeal to industry and to buyers and to producers and to filmmakers and people across the creative arts. What is the thing that’s going to bring them to the city if they’re not based here already or if they’re not already taking part? And I think the idea of finding completely new work is us having the aspiration to be more closely aligned in spirit with festivals like Sundance or Telluride as discovery festivals. That’s the overall ambition.

You’ve got some great U.K. premieres with your opener “The Outrun” and also “Alien: Romulus.” Does coming from a distributor background and having those relationships help secure high-profile titles like these?

I think being already quite embedded in the U.K. distribution landscape has helped, but also having people on my team and having connections on the board level with filmmakers, producers and distributors has helped us leverage some really strong films in the lineup. And also being able to have the sort of knowledge and trust of sales agents and producers that I brought from my previous experience working has certainly helped us to secure some films. But that’s not just me. That’s other relationships that people have on the team.

The festival has obviously had a rocky few years. Does it look fairly solid and stable from here on?

Well, I’m here to stay. I’m very much passionate about growing this thing into the next few years. And I know we’ve got a lot of really, really strong people working with us and loads of great collaborators and people on the team who feel very strongly about building this thing. So we feel very positive. And I think the very strong responses we’ve had to the festival, to the lineup, to what we’re trying to do and to the announcements that we’ve made over the last few months have proved that there is a lot of goodwill and a lot of support. And then seeing what being able to sell tickets through the Fringe app has been able to open up [in terms of] audiences that don’t necessarily know about the film festival or engage with the film festival, that is an exciting way to grow this thing outwards. So I think it’s about thinking outwardly rather than just focusing on a kind of hermetically sealed film festival.

Finally, and I’m sure this has followed you for many, many years — how often do people accidentally email you as Paul Rudd?

Actually, the main reason I took this job was to alter the SEO on Paul Ridd. Because every single time you Google my name it says, “Did you mean Paul Rudd?” So I thought because of the prestige and history of the festival, this would change the game. But it still hasn’t. I’ll have to do something even more special.