The Edinburgh Intl. Film Festival and Variety have announced a new partnership to deliver the first-ever Variety Lounge in the U.K. at this year’s EIFF, supported by VisitScotland.
The Variety Lounge, a regular fixture at other major international film festivals including Sundance and Toronto, will be hosted by Variety’s Alex Ritman and capture exclusive in-depth interviews with filmmaking talent attending this year’s EIFF.
Throughout the festival, these exclusive filmed interviews will be published across Variety.com and EIFF’s own channels.
“EIFF is the world’s longest continually running film festival and has a demonstrated commitment to fast tracking new talent,” said Variety co-president and publisher, Dea Lawrence. “Combined with the fact that the U.K. is a deeply impactful global entertainment hub makes this a natural partnership with Variety.”
EIFF CEO and festival director, Paul Ridd, said: “For the past two years we have been thrilled to have the support of Variety for the relaunched and rebooted festival. This exciting new development will offer up terrific opportunities to take filmmaking talent and the festival into the stratosphere as these dynamic interviews are sent out into the world, and we are thrilled to have the support of VisitScotland to situate our festival, Edinburgh and Scotland on the global stage.”
