This November, Eden Court’s Inverness Film Festival returns to the heart of the Highlands, screening over 30 features and 50 shorts across seven days.
Now in its 21st year, the flagship film event will showcase a wide range of Scottish premieres from some of the world’s most acclaimed filmmakers, including Alexander Payne, Aki Kaurismaki, Hirokazu Koreeda, Rysusuke Hamaguchi, Yorgos Lanthimos and Wim Wenders.
This year’s opening film is John MacLaverty’s Loch Ness: They Created a Monster, a hugely entertaining documentary that plunges us into the ridicule and rivalry of Nessie hunters in the 1970s.
The festival will close with The Bikeriders, Jeff Nichols’ furious drama following the rise of a 1960s motorcycle club and boasting a heavyweight cast that includes Jodie Comer, Tom Hardy and Austin Butler.
Highlights of this year’s programme include Poor Things, Yorgos Lanthimos’ adaptation of Alasdair Gray’s novel, Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal in Andrew Haigh’s All of us Strangers, Thomasin McKenzie and Anne Hathaway in William Oldroyd’s mystery thriller Eileen, and Anatomy of a Fall, Justine Triet’s 2023 Palme d’Or-winner, driven by an outstanding performance from German actor Sandra Huller (Toni Erdmann).
The Inverness Film Festival has always championed Scottish cinema and filmmaking talent.
This year, Silent Roar, filmed on Lewis, will be accompanied by a Q+A with director Johnny Barrington and producer Chris Young.
The festival will also host a very rare opportunity to see Luke Fowler, Peter Todd and Lee Paterson perform The Room, a two-projector cinema work with 16mm films and sound.
Scottish film talent is further represented with a host of shorts, including the festival’s first Gaelic shorts programme as well as Cinema Sgìre, a new film of video recorded on the Outer Hebrides in the late 1970s, digitised for the first time.
This year’s festival includes a range of electrifying documentary features.
Fantastic Machine turns the camera on our unchecked obsession with image, Wim Wenders guides us into the conceptual world of legendary artist Anselm Kiefer in Anselm, Scala!!! presents a definitive look at the world’s wildest cinema whilst Is There Anybody Out There? explores being disabled in an ableist world.
In international cinema, Finnish auteur Aki Kaurismaki returns with Fallen Leaves, legendary Spanish filmmaker Víctor Erice is back with Close Your Eyes, whilst two Japanese masters are back with Monster and Evil Does Not Exist (Rysusuke Hamaguchi).
The festival will also include new cinema from Georgia, Laos, Mongolia, Germany and France.
A retrospective at this year’s festival celebrates the work of the pioneering British filmmaking duo Powell and Pressburger with two of their towering achievements: A Matter of Life and Death and Black Narcissus.
Tickets for the 21st Inverness Film Festival will be available from Fri 12 Oct.
Rebecca Holt, Chief Executive at Eden Court, said:
“The 21st Inverness Film Festival will bring the world to the Highlands through over 30 features and 50 shorts.
“We start close to home with opening film, Loch Ness: They Created a Monster – after which we have stories from around the globe, including Spain, Finland, Japan, Georgia and France, finishing up in the American Midwest with closing feature The Bikeriders.
“Once again the programme includes titles that have garnered great festival acclaim, being shown for the first time on the big screen in Scotland.
“There is something for everyone in the programme, so don’t miss out on this very special moment in the Highlands’ cultural calendar.”
Paul MacDonald-Taylor, Inverness Film Festival Director and Head of Film + Visual Art at Eden Court, said:
“Cinema.
“Honestly there’s nothing better.
“That rush when you sit down to a film you don’t know, before the reviews are out, and you discover something magical.
“That’s exactly what we’ve tried to do with IFF for the past 20 years and we’re not going to stop.
“For a festival of our size to be still going so strong after so many years is a testament to our loyal audiences – and this year we have a cornucopia of features and shorts.
“I can’t wait for our audiences to discover the world on our screens.”
Tickets on sale now.
