Edinburgh International Film Festival has published an annual review of the 78th edition. The 79th edition of EIFF will run from 13 to 19 August 2026.
Download EIFF 2025 Annual Review (PDF)
EIFF 2025 Facts & Figures
- 16,500 Admissions
(12,000 in 2024)
- 43 New Feature films
(37 in 2024)
- 20 Retrospective Films
(6 in 2024)
- 6 Shorts Programmes
(5 in 2024)
- 9 In Conversation Events
(3 in 2024)
- 25 Industry Events
(13 in 2024)
- 194 Public Screenings
(138 in 2024)
- 43 P&I Screenings
(32 in 2024)
- 37 Countries Represented
(33 in 2024)
EIFF 2025 ran from 14 – 20 August with 43 new feature films, 18 of which were World Premieres including 10 World Premieres competing for The Sean Connery Prize for Feature Filmmaking Excellence, this year won by Abdolreza Kahani’s Mortican, and 6 short film programmes including The Thelma Schoonmaker Prize for Short Filmmaking Excellence competition, this year won by Joanna Vymeris’s Mother Goose.
The relaunched Edinburgh International Film Festival was heralded as a “77-year-old start up” in 2024, leveraging its history as the world’s oldest continually running film festival to bring a fresh and innovative programme of emerging and established talent and cutting edge storytelling to curious local, national and international audiences.
A vital fixture in the global film festival calendar celebrating the very best that cinema has to offer in a modern, energised context, the core strategy of the revitalised Festival has been to embed within the wider cultural offering taking place in Edinburgh in August, embracing the sense of discovery, experimentation and cross-arts collaboration.
The 2025 event created unique opportunities to showcase new work with substantial cash prizes decided by audience vote, featuring market-leading competitions for World Premiere features and shorts spanning all forms and genres with the £50K Sean Connery Prize for Feature Filmmaking Excellence and the £15K Thelma Schoonmaker Prize for Short Filmmaking Excellence.
The Festival hosted events and screenings with world-class names in film, including Thelma Schoonmaker, Ken Loach, Renée Zellweger, Andrea Arnold, Nia DaCosta and Jeremy Thomas, and delivered an impactful industry programme in partnership with Fringe organisations for attending filmmakers, sales agents, buyers, commissioners and executives.
At Edinburgh International Film Festival we are firm believers in cinema and its bright future, in Scotland, in the UK and globally. If 2024 was all about laying out the role we can play in supporting that future, our vision for the new look Festival, and delivering a kick ass first edition, 2025 was a year of consolidation and growth, driven always by a fundamental spirit of optimism. Our second edition in August saw bigger audiences, more guests and even better films play across the city. This all signalled encouraging progress for a Festival that we push to being as inclusive, open and future-facing as possible.
Edinburgh in August is host to the biggest Arts Festival in the world, welcoming local, national and international audiences to the city. This year we continued to tap into that huge audience potential by renewing and expanding our partnerships with the Fringe, our sister festivals and a whole range of arts organisations in the city and beyond. We delivered a rich programme of screenings, special events and talks hosted in a range of cinemas and venues across the city, We were particularly thrilled to be able to screen in the beautiful, newly resurrected Filmhouse for the first time, an Edinburgh cinematic institution that has been sorely missed.
With the continued support of The Sean Connery Foundation, the Festival delivered another rich competition of World Premiere features, a programme of ten excellent, brand new films from all over the world competing for the £50K prize. Our winner the blackly funny and moving drama Mortician saw returning director Abdolreza Kahani take home the prize after debuting his film A Shrine last year in Competition. Cinema icon Thelma Schoonmaker also returned to Edinburgh for a second time and presented the second edition of our £15K Shorts Prize, named in her honour, to the makers of dark comedy Mother Goose.
These competitions are the beating heart of the new look Festival. We want to support filmmakers, producers and everyone involved in getting films made and seen with a powerful global launch pad for their work, and this goes beyond one week in August. We want to build and be a platform for filmmaking that can lead on to something meaningful, whether that’s ensuring a film has the best chance of securing future distribution or providing the opportunity for a filmmaker to encounter the producer, commissioner or financier who is going to help them get their next film made.
Our Industry Programme delivered a host of networking opportunities, panels and events with key executives from the world of UK and international production, distribution and exhibition. This included an innovative new programme built in collaboration UK production outfit Unified that saw top execs, producers and creatives from the world of international film present intimate discussions of their careers and the state of the independent film landscape.
But a film festival is always fundamentally going to be about the audience and about the films. 2025 saw dozens of features, shorts programmes, repertory films and major in person events, including illuminating conversations with guests including Ben Wheatley, Nia DaCosta, Andrea Arnold, Jeremy Thomas, and the legendary Ken Loach. We were thrilled to host the UK Premieres of acclaimed films Sorry Baby, Dragonfly, The Golden Spurtle and many more and to welcome stars like Renée Zellwegger, Brenda Blethyn and Sam Riley to their screenings.
The Festival could not happen without the support of all of our partners and the commitment and dedication of the team. We are enormously grateful to our funders, supporters and everyone who has helped us and continues to help us reboot this terrific Festival. Special thanks go to the public funding bodies for their tireless support and advice, to all of our brilliant industry partners who gave their resources and time so generously, to the press, to our programme and venue partners and all the different organisations and individuals we worked with to deliver a second edition of which we are immensely proud. And of course our huge gratitude to audiences for responding so positively and thoughtfully to our programme.
The Festival will be back later in 2026 running 13-19 August. Please save the date and get ready to return to EIFF, the home of independent cinema in the UK, once more.
Paul Ridd, CEO & Festival Director
