The 2026 Edinburgh International Film Festival lineup is here, and director Paul Ridd thinks its their greatest competition slate since they rebooted the event three years ago. “I’ve been very proud of everything we’ve done in 2024 [and] 2025,” Ridd begins to The Hollywood Reporter. “But this one, I think, is really kind of surpassing expectations.”
It is indeed his and festival producer Emma Boa’s third year at the helm of this ship, and it’s safe to say they’ve navigated uncharted waters. In an unstable industry with IP, nepotism and maybe even now artificial intelligence ruling supreme, Ridd and Boa have doubled down on emerging filmmakers with original stories.
Their hyped-up competition schedule is indicative of that modus operandi: There’s Lindsay Ryan’s comedy debut Capsized, starring Rhys Ifans, about a houseboat holiday thrown into disarray; Thom Lunshof’s feature debut First Zone in which a woman navigates a flooded and desolate post-apocalyptic landscape; Paul Wright’s psychological portrait Mission with George MacKay; and Simon Rynink’s 1999-set Out There starring Michael Sheen, who joins a gang of misfits to uncover a UFO conspiracy in a sleepy Welsh town, among others.
It’s a lesson learned from Sundance, Ridd explains to THR — from the late, great Robert Redford himself, in fact. “Anyone coming away from that [would be] moved not only by his passing but also by the immense legacy that he’s left with that festival,” says Ridd, who heads to Park City, Utah every year looking to nab some of the most promising features (he came away this January with Louis Paxton’s The Incomer, which is set to open this year’s edition on August 13).
