Review: Literary Salon at the Film Festival

As a Literary Salon, our focus for a film review is bound to be based on scriptwriting, so here is a snapshot from this year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival.

Sacred Creatures (Frieda Luk, 2026) World Premiere

First off is a good example of keeping the viewer in suspense. At a reunion of siblings, the younger sister Miriam is portrayed as troubled in some way, but the only clue we’re given regrading her mental fragility alludes to a former encounter with a dubious religious experience. As she gains a ‘following’ of Pythonesque nutters, her elder siblings become increasingly agitated. The trick of not telling the whole story, nor truly letting on who is genuinely bonkers would be infuriating in most films, or possibly acceptable, but in Sacred Creatures the dark humour of the script plays on this ambiguity… and just about pulls it off.

Out There (Simon Ryninks, 2026) World Premiere

Second, with a more British (or Welsh) humour this is a poignant story of a teenager trying to come to terms with her father’s disappearance some years back, in a backwater town obsessed with UFOs and alien abductions. Maz is a bright kid with a flair for science and fascination in planetary activity, but in ‘Caradoc’, she and her geeky pal are far too influenced by dodgy interlopers and an aged hippy named Shifty Gruff who would be more at home in Glastonbury than Ceredigion. This script plays on the suspension of disbelief as this wayward town battles with the forces of evil, presumed aliens, and the dodgy MoD. Nonetheless, at its heart is a family coping with loss. Disbelief is another word for denial: the first of Kübler-Ross’s stages of grief. The script is a metaphor for exactly this.

Skintown (Kieron J. Walsh, 2026) World Premiere

In this film there is another missing father. Not one supposedly abducted by aliens, but one who ran away from Northern Ireland. Set in Enniskillen, aka ‘Skintown,’ a voiceover gives Vinnie’s point of view as he also dreams and plots to leave the place mired in violence. By using this narrative device, the script attempts to wriggle free from opinions on the various warring factions (represented by three-letter acronyms) and celebrates – albeit momentarily – the ceasefire of 1994. The voiceover also suggests an out of body experience as the characters indulge in 90s culture. Perhaps it’s only this ‘ecstasy’ that leads Vinnie to say, “If you love them, you diffuse them.” If only the film had ended there, before the word ‘provisional’ was added to the most infamous acronym. The explosive denouement is devastating, and yet somehow the film ends in hope – not least in bringing this book to life through film, but also sharing the lived experience of Irish people with those who need to listen to history’s lesson.

A worthy winner of The Sean Connery Prize for Feature Filmmaking Excellence.

Pretty Babies (Tyler-Marie Evans, 2026) World Premiere

Friendship is a core theme in the next two films, specifically between teenage girls. The concept that a profound friendship is the most complex and abstract form of love – because so often we don’t get anything from it – threads through both. Pretty Babies also uses voiceover narrative, as well as inserted film clips and songs, to engage us in the youngsters’ Hollywood dreams. While the script focuses on a specific character, the film blurs the narrative point of view, especially when another two – older – females are introduced, thus focusing on the female experience rather than a specific character. Like Out There, this film has its share of ‘energies’ and ‘shakra’ bullshit, but within the darker subject of teenage prostitution. Whether the girls achieve their dreams is hard to tell; even the script has the lines “Is this real?” And when the poor girl, who’s been drawn into a dark spiral, phones her mother and leaves a voice note, it’s hard to tell if we are witnessing her reality, or a clever script device. Either way, ambiguity wins the day. 

Extra Geography (Molly Manners, 2026) UK Premiere

Next, a more relatable film in which rules and loyalties of a special friendship are compromised by reality… even though this reality is a posh girls’ boarding school some distance from many people’s experience. The lead characters, Flic and Minna, are desperate to be equals and high achievers; they long to be “worldly” and dread to “end up as desperate whores” (a bitter comparison with Pretty Babies) but when boys are introduced to participate in the school production of A midsummer Night’s Dream, the dynamics change. Crucially the script was based on a short story by Rose Tremain, which presented writer, Miriam Battye, with a story that was already cinematic, and conveniently divided into ‘scenes’ (displayed on screen over Landseer’s depiction of Shakespeare’s play.) The director was then able to translate her own teenage experiences through an old-fashioned tale of adolescence into something which two first time film actors completely embraced: a bittersweet tale of close friendship and encroaching envy. The dialogue was bright and sparky thanks to the original story, but the tightly written script was stuck to rigidly by the two debut actors, to great effect.

Industry Talk: From Page to Screen

As luck would have it, the event that most applied to this write-up had on the panel Extra Geography producer Sarah Brocklehurst, and writer Miriam Battye. The discussion focused on adaptations, and questioned whether a story as short and concise as Rose Tremain’s original could be made into a 94-minute narrative. First, there is the issue of ‘fidelity’ – and there was no question that this script was faithful to the story. Being creative yet reverential is vital, and in this case, Tremain was not only approached but fully consulted over the process. As a precise writer her original story used dialogue sparingly, yet one line stuck out. This gave the perfect tone to the adaptation: the precocious, arrogant, sheltered life of the girls  asking, “Do you love her yet?” making the ardent high-stakes situation of these teens ridiculous, funny, but so, so real.

Of course, things change with adaptation. To return to Skintown, this was the novelist’s take on his own book, where having opportunity to dig more out of the characters, their relationships, and the dramatic flow brought new vitality to the original. In reference to the other film being discussed, Borges and Me, came a question on the use of voiceover. There is an instinct of ‘show, don’t tell’ in literary work that certainly translates to scripting, but in film it’s often only in the editing room that this concept is honed. There’s also an issue of who is voicing this narrative, since voiceover is always post hoc and, therefore, distant from the action – especially if it’s the character commenting on the past. The actor needs to be the older version of that character.

In previous years we have posed the question, to read the book before the film? The actors who played Flic and Minna so desperately wanted these parts, they certainly did their homework! Let’s leave the last word, then, to these fledgling stars, insofar as how they saw the future of their film. Writers often wonder how people perceive, consume, or interpret their work. Galaxie Clear (Minna) hoped Extra Geography would be a staple for teenage slumber and sleepover parties for years to come. But Marni Duggan (Flic) had a more profound suggestion, that “art is open to interpretation, in whatever way it relates to you.” This film more than simply adapted a short story; it transposed the experiences of two naïve teenage girls into something complex and universal.

The Education of Jane Cumming (Sophie Heldman, 2026) UK Premiere

We next find ourselves in a very different school in early 19^th century Edinburgh where a group of girls are put under the care of two female teachers, one of whom is played by the scriptwriter, Flora Nicholson. Here the script is not only based on the book Scotch Verdict (Lillian Faderman) but as a true story the original court papers were valuable source material. Among this gaggle of schoolgirls is one who doesn’t quite fit in. This leads to a catastrophic accusation, and an infamous court case so scandalous it was kept under lock and key for a hundred years. Interestingly, Nicholson explained that she, when writing, played all the characters in her head; also, how the script came from a gut feeling that these teachers, two ‘minor ladies,’ would have the guts to sue their accuser. Whether or not they won, the strength and importance of this screening is that, after 216, years these women finally got their story told on the big screen first at the Edinburgh International Film Festival… and hopefully again in the near future.

Her Private Hell (Nicolas Winding Refn, 2026) UK Premiere

A brief diversion from our focus on scriptwriting, here was a script so minimal and kitsch, peppered with cliché and catchphrase, it hardly requires discussion. Film, of course, is an audio-visual medium, and so this weird, futuristic, trippy dystopia was a feast for the eyes and ears, but the storyline was so loose and rambling it barely made sense. One of our Salon regulars attending noted that so many films this Festival seemed puerile and would benefit from being chopped into three and dished up on Netflix for the gaming generation! In the case of this film, this doesn’t seem an unfair point.

Goodbye Cruel World – Adieu Monde Cruel (Felix de Givry, 2026) UK Premiere

Our final film concludes this incidental focus on youth with another touching coming of age story. Here, another voiceover narrative dominates the script, and also accentuates the notion that this story is being told (to use a writerly term) in medias res. We hear that the story begins at the end because 14-year-old Otto is about to take his own life. However, despite having written of his intention to all his classmates, his failure to end it all leaves him in the embarrassing position of having to hide away. When discovered by schoolmate Lena, the two youngsters form a close bond which adds immense tension, and tenderness. Their teenage naïveté leads them to plot the seemingly impossible and, ultimately, leads to a sadly surreal conclusion. Often film plays with reality, and one wonders if these characters really exist at all. The same could be said of Otto. But as the voiceover reminds us at the conclusion, the end wasn’t really the end. “When all is over, new things are being born.”

So, here’s to next year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival, which will in fact be the 80^th – can you believe it‽

Please support the Film Festival next year, and why not vote for our friends at Filmhouse… they have been nominated for the BIFA Cinema of the Year Award!