EIFF 2026

Rediscover our Edinburgh coverage

  • Film Review: Great Freedom

    Film Review: Great Freedom

    ★★★★☆ “There is no way out.” Lifer Viktor (Georg Friedrich) barks this at his decades-old friend and cellmate, Hans (Franz Rogowski), on the prospect of breaking out of their West German prison in 1969 in Austrian filmmaker Sebastian Miese’s second narrative feature.

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  • Film Review: Red Rocket
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    Film Review: Red Rocket

    ★★★★☆ Sean Baker is quickly establishing himself as one of the finest filmmakers in America today. With Starlet, Tangerine and The Florida Project, he has already displayed a precise and empathetic eye for those living the hardscrabble life at the skuzzy end of the American Dream.

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  • Film Review: The Batman

    Film Review: The Batman

    ★★★★☆ Robert Pattinson dons the cape and cowl to wreak vengeance on the city that took his parents’ lives, and in the process take down The Riddler (Paul Dano), Penguin (Colin Farrell) and Carmine Falcone (John Turturro). Matt Reeves’ The Batman is just as moody but twice as smart as previous iterations.

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  • Film Review: Ali & Ava

    Film Review: Ali & Ava

    ★★★★★ In Ali & Ava, Yorkshire-born director Clio Barnard’s fourth feature film, two lovers defy the aged, gendered, classed and racialised expectations of their families and communities. Ali (Adeel Akhtar) is a landlord with a gift for the gab and a tender care for his tenants.

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  • Film Review: The Duke

    Film Review: The Duke

    ★★☆☆☆ The late British director Roger Michell’s final film, The Duke is based on the true story of Kempton Bunton (played here by Jim Broadbent), a pensioner from Benwell in Newcastle upon Tyne who, in 1961, stole Francisco Goya’s Portrait of the Duke of Wellington from London’s National Gallery.

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  • Film Review: La Mif

    Film Review: La Mif

    ★★★★☆ Following a group of teenage girls, La Mif is a nuanced and moving study of life in a care home in Geneva. No single performer – largely non-professional actors – in the piece stands above the rest. Rather, the cast work in unison to give a singular, outstanding ensemble performance.

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  • How the Toronto International Film Festival could affect this year’s Oscars race
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    How the Toronto International Film Festival could affect this year’s Oscars race

    The Toronto International Film Festival is long past and folks are now looking forward to this year’s Academy Awards – the 94th Academy Awards, to be precise. And you can almost be certain last month’s festival will have an impact on the upcoming Oscars.

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  • Film Review: The Real Charlie Chaplin

    Film Review: The Real Charlie Chaplin

    ★★★☆☆ Peter Middleton and James Spinney’s The Real Charlie Chaplin grapples with the conundrum at the heart of the silent era’s greatest clown: that no one could ever know really know the person behind the performance.

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  • Film Review: Petrov’s Flu

    Film Review: Petrov’s Flu

    ★★★★★ Adapted from the novel by Alexey Salnikov’s, Kirill Serebrennikov’s Petrov’s Flu is as dense and impenetrable as it is lurching, captivating and perplexing. It’s a captivating, purgatorial nightmare that describes the feverish breakdown of post-Soviet Russian society.

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  • Film Review: Flee

    Film Review: Flee

    ★★★★★ Flee is a thought-provoking exploration of one man’s flight from the Taliban’s tyranny in Afghanistan. Blurring traditional boundaries of documentary with rich, beautiful animation, director Jonas Poher Rasmussen has a great deal invested in telling this story.

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