UK director Louis Paxton’s feature debut The Incomer will open the 79th Edinburgh International Film Festival, and Focus Features has acquired international rights to the film.
The Incomer premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January and won the NEXT Innovator award.
Domhnall Gleeson and Gayle Rankin star in the comedy set on a remote Scottish island. The film follows two siblings whose lives consist of hunting seabirds, chatting to mythic creatures and defending their isle from dreaded ‘incomers’. Their world is upended with the arrival of an awkward council worker, played by Gleeson, who comes to uproot them to the mainland.
Grant O’Rourke, Emun Elliott, Michelle Gomez, John Hannah co-star.
It is produced by Earth Mama producer Shirley O’Connor and Emily Gotto for the UK’s Pilea Pictures.
Backing came from the BFI, Screen Scotland, musician Moby and actor Lindsay Hicks’ US production company Little Walnut, Day Zero, a joint US venture between Paramount Global and Trevor Noah, UK’s Head Gear and Ireland’s Inevitable Pictures. The co-producer is Wendy Griffin.
“This is precisely the kind of film that EIFF is all about,” said Paul Ridd, EIFF CEO and festival director. “With wit, grace and intelligence, this striking, unpredictable and beautifully acted Scottish debut dazzled, moved and amused us immensely when we first saw it back in January. We are thrilled to open this year’s edition with a film which embodies such a stirring and inspiring spirit of creativity, empathy and invention in filmmaking”.
Universal Pictures International will distribute in UK-Ireland and Sumerian Pictures in the US.
EIFF runs from August 13-19.
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