02-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Herald Scotland
The Connery connections reviving Edinburgh's film festival
When the event returns next month, his presence will be felt across the festival thanks to his family's determination to honour his devotion to both the event and the city of his birth.
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They launched the Sean Connery Foundation, a new charity to support projects and initiatives in Scotland and the Bahamas, where he lived latterly, in 2022, two years after the screen star passed away at the age of 1990.
The EIFF almost vanished from the industry calendar two years ago when the Centre for the Moving Image, the arts charity which ran both the event and the Filmhouse cinema, its main base in August, went into administration.
Goldfinger will be among the classic James Bond films given a rare cinema screening at this year's Edinburgh International Film Festival. (Image: Agency)
The event returned in reduced from in 2023 as part of the Edinburgh International Festival programme, before it was revived in a new organisation led by chairman Andrew Macdonald, one of Scotland's leading film producers, and Paul Ridd, the who led a full-scale reboot of the event last summer.
Efforts to put the festival firmly back on the radar of filmmakers received a huge boost when it was announced that the Connery Foundation would be backing the EIFF's new feature film prize.
Won by self-taught British filmmaker Jack King last year with his 'microbudget' debut feature The Ceremony, the Connery prize attracted more than 4500 submissions to the festival this year – almost double the number for the 2024 edition.
The Connery family is also key to a major showcase of new Scottish filmmaking talent at the festival.
The festival will showcase the first six projects to emerge from a new Sean Connery Talent Lab initiative, which the foundation launched last year with the National Film and Television School.
Their short films focus on a young boy beginning to unearth a secret family trauma, an amateur basketball player under mounting pressure, a young woman who stands up to her employer at a grand ceilidh, the impact of addiction, a doctor forced to choose between medical protocol and her humanity, and a supermarket bargain hunt which turns deadly.
Sir Sean's family will also be introducing the six classic James Bond films that the actor starred in between 1962 and 1971. The screenings, which will run at 11am at the Filmhouse during the festival, are a rare opportunity to see the actor's iconic performances on the big screen.
