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Festival coverage

Edinburgh International Film Festival

2005

Presley Chweneyagae in Tsotsi
Presley Chweneyagae in Tsotsi

The 2005 Edinburgh International Film Festival opened with Richard E Grant's directorial debut Wah-Wah - based on events from his own childhood in South Africa - and closed with Eighties-set gangster flick The Business.

Other highlights included the long-awaited cowboys-in-space film spin-off Serenity and Tsotsi - which won both the Audience and Michael Powell Awards for director Gavin Hood. Other winners included Mike Mills, who won the Guardian New Directors Award for Thumbsucker. John Williams won the Best British Short Film Award for Hibernation and Elizabeth Hobbs scooped the McLaren for New British Animation for The True Story Of Sawney Beane. Simon Hynd won Short Scottish Documentary Awarad for Arts: The Catalyst.

Other years (27)

Box office and information

Latest reviews

  • The Tales Of Hoffmann
    Review preview for The Tales Of Hoffmann

    The passage of time - and a beautiful 4k restoration - have been kind to this reimagining of Jacques Offenbach's opera, with its deliberately operatic gestures and colours and stylised production design feeling sharply avant garde even today.

    Amber Wilkinson · 4 out of 5
    A poet recalls three doomed romances.
  • Black Narcissus
    Review preview for Black Narcissus

    Perfectly controlled lighting simulates the thin air that exhausts the once disciplined sisters.

    Jennie Kermode · 4 out of 5
    A group of nuns struggle to keep order in a remote Himalayan convent.
  • Peeping Tom
    Review preview for Peeping Tom

    Peeping Tom is a film all about watching and identification, a film whose real horror hinges on the way it implicates the audience in its dark voyeurism.

    Jennie Kermode · 4.5 out of 5
    A young photographer becomes fascinated by expressions of fear, with deadly consequences.
  • The Red Shoes
    Review preview for The Red Shoes

    The dance sequences are brilliantly performed and well worth watching the film for in their own right.

    Jennie Kermode · 4.5 out of 5
    A dancer is torn between the man she loves and her obsessive commitment to her craft.
  • Asylum
    Review preview for Asylum

    So studiously edgy are the performances that one is never quite sure who harbours the darkest pathology.

    Anton Bitel · 4 out of 5
    Infidelity at an institution for the criminally insane.
  • On A Clear Day
    Review preview for On A Clear Day

    Mullan brings a gruff, no-nonsense persona to his role, making Frank's emotional journey well worth taking.

    Tony Sullivan · 4 out of 5
    A redundant shipworker from Glasgow dreams of swimming the English Channel.
  • Letter From An Unknown Woman
    Review preview for Letter From An Unknown Woman

    A classic three-tissue melodrama.

    Nicola Osborne · 3 out of 5
    A woman falls for her neighbour and maintains her unrequited love down the years.
  • The Wedding
    Review preview for The Wedding

    The Wedding is a delightful satire on Polish marriage traditions but much of what it features is so universal that people all over the world will be able to identify with it.

    Jennie Kermode · 4 out of 5
    A wedding reception where everyone has a secret descends into dark farce.
  • Saraband
    Review preview for Saraband

    Saraband, in true Bergman tradition, wrestles with human relationships, using a slow pace, pointed dialogue, and heavy symbolism to explore the psychological states of the characters.

    Chris · 4.5 out of 5
    Ingmar Bergman returns to Scenes From A Marriage 30 years on.
  • The Great Ecstasy Of Robert Carmichael
    Review preview for The Great Ecstasy Of Robert Carmichael

    I’m at a loss to see what Thomas Clay’s point is.

    Jeff Robson · 2 out of 5
    The fall of an intelligent teenager into a life of ultraviolence and depravity.

A–Z of Edinburgh International Film Festival 2005 reviews

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