Edinburgh film festival 2024: 12 of the best movies on show

1 The Outrun (Dir: Nora Fingscheidt)
Saoirse Ronan stars in this adaptation of Amy Liptrot’s memoir about surmounting addiction and leaving London for her childhood home in Orkney.

2 The Substance (Dir: Coralie Fargeat)
A gonzo body-horror satire of ageism and sexism in Hollywood, featuring Demi Moore in a career-redefining role comparable to John Travolta in Pulp Fiction.

3 Lollipop (Dir: Daisy-May Hudson)
British independent film award-nominated film-maker and documentarian Daisy-May Hudson makes her fiction feature debut with this drama about a woman released from prison trying to regain custody of her children.

4 A Sudden Glimpse to Deeper Things (Dir: Mark Cousins)
Mark Cousins brings his award-winning documentary to Edinburgh for its UK premiere. Narrated by Tilda Swinton, this is a rapturous, intensely personal study of Scottish artist Wilhelmina Barns-Graham.

5 Acting (Dir: Sophie Fiennes)
The paranoid world of Macbeth is revived in this immersive documentary by Sophie Fiennes, which looks at a group of young actors preparing to perform the Scottish play.

6 Bogancloth (Dir: Ben Rivers)
Documentarian Ben Rivers revisits the subject of his 2011 film Two Years at Sea, about a forest-dwelling man in the Scottish wilderness - a film which promises to question the nature of solitude and reclusiveness.

7 Armand (Dir: Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel)
Something for those who think Norwegian star Renate Reinsve deserves more than just being the dead woman in flashbacks in the Apple TV+ series Presumed Innocent. She plays a woman disturbed by her son’s behaviour in this debut film from Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel, grandson of Liv Ullmann and Ingmar Bergman.

8 Black Dog (Dir: Guan Hu)
A film for dog people – Guan Hu’s Chinese drama, set in 2008, is about a motorbike stunt rider and ex-convict who tries to earn money offered by the government by rounding up stray dogs in preparation for the Beijing Olympics and winds up befriending his canine target.

9 My Favourite Cake (Dirs: Maryam Moghadam, Behtash Sanaeeha)

This wonderfully charming, gentle and humane drama from Iran now comes to Edinburgh – a story of a lonely widow quietly defying her country’s joyless puritanism and finding love with a shy taxi driver.

10 Sing Sing (Dir: Greg Kwedar)
Never was a title more appropriate – and promises to be a delight, even for those who remember Max Bialystock’s production of Prisoners of Love. Colman Domingo stars in this uplifting drama about a real-life project to teach theatre and music skills to prisoners at Sing Sing jail.

11 Oddity (Dir: Damian Mc Carthy)
Irish film-maker Damian Mc Carthy won the Midnighter Audience award at SXSW in Austin, Texas, with this unsettling horror: a blind medium discovers the truth about her sister’s death with the help of a strange wooden mannequin.

12 I Know Where I’m Going! (Dirs: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger)
Thelma Schoonmaker, editor and colleague of Martin Scorsese and widow of Michael Powell, gives a very special and uniquely insightful introduction to this Powell/Pressburger classic.

• The Edinburgh international film festival runs from 15-21 August