Recently, I went to see Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey in beautiful 70 mm at the Filmhouse here in Edinburgh. I was completely blown away by its scale, ambition and visual beauty, but I was also troubled by its relationship to Homer’s original text, the changes to the story, to Odysseus’ character, and to key elements of the plot.
Then I saw it again, and something changed. The second time, I was able to put aside my expectations of what The Odyssey should be and see it on its own terms as Nolan’s version of this ancient story, reimagined for a new generation. I realised that my resistance the first time wasn’t really just about the film. I had gone into the cinema with my father’s hand on my shoulder. My father died about five years ago, but before he died, he was a classicist who loved Homer and Virgil. He even wrote a book about love, death and communication in the ‘Iliad’, the ‘Odyssey’, and the ‘Aeneid’.
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I remember going to see Wolfgang Petersen’s film Troy with him on release, and how angry he was about the changes it had made to the ‘Iliad’. We had a fierce conversation afterwards about how he felt the film had betrayed the original text. So when I saw Nolan’s new film, I was imagining what my father would have thought of it and what our conversation might have been, what it might have felt like to sit there and watch it next to him. That inevitably covered my judgement. The second time I could let that go. I could watch the film without asking what my father would have thought, and instead asked what I thought and what the film was trying to do on its own terms.
I think that says quite a lot about how I approach being a Festival Director. In a sense, I always have two lenses that I’m looking through. One is my own perspective, my tastes, instincts and understanding of cinema. The other is an imagined audience. What would somebody else see in this? What would another filmmaker, programmer, critiquer, critic or audience member respond to? I think it would be a mistake for a Festival Director to operate purely on personal taste.
One of the things I love most about this job is that it is fundamentally collaborative. I love talking about films, arguing about them and debating the shape of a programme with our festival producer Emma, our programmers and the wider team. So much of what ultimately appears at the festival comes out of those conversations, but there also has to be a personal perspective. I want to bring something of myself to the festival, of course, experience, taste and hopefully something different.
At the same time, we are all custodians of something much bigger than ourselves, the Edinburgh International Film Festival has more than 70 years of history behind it. When I came into the role two and a half years ago, the challenge was to create something new with our board and team, partly from scratch, but also not entirely. So much of what we do is about honouring that history whilst thinking about what cinema is going to do next. For me, that’s the balancing act. What do I bring personally to the table? What does the team bring? What part of the legacy will be ours, and what are we building for the future?
A big part of that future is our focus on world premieres. I want the festival to help create a market around those films, giving filmmakers not just a première but a genuine opportunity to find distribution, travel to other festivals and ultimately reach audiences beyond our own. I know how impossibly difficult it is to get films made. Getting them seen can be just as difficult. If we can discover a filmmaker, give them a platform and help their work reach beyond the few 100 people who might encounter it at our festival, or even help them get their next film made, that feels incredibly important. That really is what I think the festival is for, and where my role sits within it.
It’s about thinking of the audience, but it’s also about the industry, and I don’t think those things are separate. We want to provide a platform for filmmakers and build around their films through our industry programme, repertory programme, guests and events. This year, for example, we’re welcoming filmmakers including Kenneth Branagh and Christine Vachon, and actors including Ewan McGregor and Bruce Dern. Those guests build on the extraordinary body of people that we’ve welcomed over the last couple of years to the festival: Gaspar Noé, Alex Garland, Thelma Schoonmaker, Nia DaCosta, Ken Loach, Andrew Arnold, Ben Wheatley and many others. The hope is that all these people bring something to the table: their experience, ideas, and stories, and create something stimulating for audiences, filmmakers and the wider industry.
That’s one of the things I love about festivals and working at festivals. They could be great levellers. You could put an emerging filmmaker in the same room as someone who has been making films for 50 years, or an audience member alongside a producer, and suddenly a conversation happens that otherwise wouldn’t exist. That’s where some of the magic happens. Of course, the job isn’t just the seven days in August. The festival for us is happening all year. There are films to discover, programming to develop, the team to build, marketing and fundraising to work on, partnerships to develop, guests to invite, and industry relationships to nurture year round.
There’s also an enormous amount of pitching, persuading people of the cultural and commercial value of what we do, and of the importance of protecting and developing independent cinema. And then’s Edinburgh itself. Doing this festival in Edinburgh in August is an extraordinary opportunity. We’re in the middle of one of the world’s great concentrations of arts and culture, and we try to draw energy from that, connecting with the wider city and the extraordinary artistic community that is here. That has been one of the great pleasures of the last couple of years for me. Moving up here, getting to know the city, being welcomed into the Scottish arts and film scene and feeling increasingly connected to it.
My own background is in acquisitions, so I perhaps come at festival directing from a slightly different perspective than some of my predecessors, but ultimately I live and breathe cinema. It’s everything to me. My closest friends, loved ones and community are largely people who love film as much as I do. But more importantly, I like feeling that we’re actually doing something. For me, the most powerful part of the job is very simple: that moment when you know you’ve created a connection between a filmmaker and an audience, you can feel it in the room. You can hear an audience reacting to a film. You can feel the atmosphere change, hear the questions afterwards in the Q&As. You can see people coming out inspired, excited, challenged. Sometimes even argue about what they’ve just seen. That is incredibly powerful, and I think that’s what keeps all of us going.
There is, of course, the social side of festivals: the parties, dinners, receptions and special events. We’re also holding a major conference this year around the future of independent cinema, and putting that together has been a total joy. Those connections matter, but they’re really part of the same thing: creating a space where people can come together around cinema and imagine what comes next. So, when someone asks me, like yourselves, what it’s like being a Festival Director, my answer is quite simple. It’s challenging, but those challenges are part of what makes it exciting, and it isn’t really about one person. It isn’t about just my voice or my taste alone. It’s about the team, the filmmakers, the audiences, the people who have built this festival over the last 70 plus years, and the people who will build it into the future. It’s about Scotland, Edinburgh, cinema and the community around all of those things. But it’s also about the people on the ground who make everything happen.
And perhaps in the end, it’s about the same question I was asking myself when I watched The Odyssey for the second time. How do we honour what came before while still making room for something new? That’s what I hope we’re doing with this festival. We’re looking into the past, but also at the present, and in doing so, looking forward. If we’re able to discover films, create connections, give filmmakers opportunities, surprise people and help them fall in love with cinema all over again, then I think we’re doing something worthwhile.