Film festival reveals star line-up

● Kevin Bacon, Richard E Grant, Stanley Tucci and Oliver Stone to grace the event’s red carpet during landmark anniversary

illness in That Good Night. Also confirmed are Trudie Styler, the actress wife of rock star Sting, and James Bond composer David Arnold.

Bacon, who made his name in Footloose, A Few Good Men, Apollo 13 and Flatliners, will be launching coming-ofdrama drama Story of a Girl, which is directed by his wife, Kyra Sedgwick. The pair, who will take part in an “in conversation” event, will also introduce The Woodsman, a 2004 film about a paedophile’s attempt to adapt to life after prison, which both starred in.

Final Portrait, the new film by The Lovely Bones star Tucci, will be presenting the festival’s first ever “people’s gala,” with all tickets pegged at £5.

Another big-name American guest, Danny Huston, star of The Aviator and The Constant Gardener, will appear in and direct The Last Photograph, a drama partly inspired by the Lockerbie disaster.

Award-winning British stage and screen star Juliet Stevenson will be at the European premiere of her film Let Me Go, based on the memoirs of Helga Schneider, who was abandoned by her mother during the Second World War at the age of just four.

Grant, who launched Withnail & I at the festival in 1987, will return for a special 30th anniversary screening and a special event to discuss his career, while Stone will be honoured with a 30th anniversary screening of 1980s hit Wall Street.

Tucci, Grant, Hill and Arnold will also be taking part in special “in person” events, while author Ian Rankin will be discussing TV drama Reichanbach Falls, which was based on one of his short stories.

Documentaries about the Glasgow music scene in the 1980s and 1990s, Hollywood icon Cary Grant, the launch of the Voyager 1 space probe 40 years ago and the siege of Aleppo will also be launched.

Festival director Mark Adams said: “As always, we’re still trying to pin actors down, but it’s great that we’re able to confirm so many guests for special events. Some of them like Kevin Bacon, Kyra Sedgwick and Stanley Tucci have films in the festival but there are others we’ve been speaking to for some time who say they would love to come in future when they have time.

“We’retryingtogetorlando Bloom to come over for the world premiere of his film. He’s filming in Louisiana at the moment, so it will depend on his schedule.

“This is the first time we’ve done a people’s gala, which Stanley Tucci will be introducing at the Festival Theatre. We wanted to put on an event in a lovely venue at a price that is really accessible to anybody. A lot of people might think they can’t afford to go to a gala screening or don’t normally go to the Festival Theatre.”

The festival will be using the Vue cinema at Omni Centre for the first time, expanding to new venues in Leith and Morningside during its landmark anniversary, as well as staging a special event at an Edinburgh University wave research facility.

The festival’s celebrations are already under way with an outdoor exhibition of classic and rarely-seen images from the event’s archives in Festival Square, St Andrew Square and Edinburgh University’s Old College Quad.

Outdoor screenings of films like Mamma Mia!, Dirty Dancing, Cars, Singin’ in the Rain and The Jungle Book will be staged in St Andrew Square before the festival, which runs from 21 June-2 July.

Director Mark Adams, top, unveiled a festival programme featuring