Our friends at Edinburgh Film Festival are moving online with an exciting programme shown at Curzon Home.

They included some films that we love , so make sure you don’t miss the opportunity to watch these and support the Edinburgh Int Film Festival. They also have a hot line-up of Director’s Talks including a Masterclass with the Dardenne Brothers or a Q&A with Hlynur Pálmason. Fore more info visit www.edfilmfest.org.uk/ed-film-fest-home

Ed Film Fest at Home, an online festival of the best new cinema for you to enjoy at home, opens his weekend to the audiences worldwide! Presented by Edinburgh International Film Festival (EIFF) and Curzon Home Cinema (CHC), this ambitious project features a selection of the best future film releases.

OUR RECOMMENDATIONS

YOUNG AHMED (25 June – 2 July) with a live Q&A and masterclass on Saturday, 27 June at 4pm. Directed and written by Luc Dardenne and Jean-Pierre Dardenne. After taking to heart an extremist interpretation of the Qu’ran, a Belgian teenager hatches a plan to kill his teacher.

The Dardennes are among some of the most important contemporary filmmakers when talking about social cinema and working class representation on the screen alongside directors like Ken Loach, Aki Kaurismaki, Nanni Moretti or Guediguian, so any proposal coming from them is worth a watch to reflect on the world we live in. The Dardenne Brothers won last year’s Best Director award at the Cannes Film Festival for this brave new work, another intimate portrait of a Muslim teenager (extraordinary first-time actor Idir Ben Addi) in a small Belgian town who is being gradually radicalized into extremism. Taking a serious view of a difficult issue—the effect of fanaticism on the body and soul—the Dardennes here remind viewers why they continue to be at the center of 21st-century cinema.

A WHITE, WHITE DAY (27 – 29 June) with a live Q&A on Sunday, 28 June at 8.30pm. Directed by Hlynur Palmason and starring Ingvar Sigurdsson. Icelandic drama about a recently retired policeman who becomes obsessed that his recently-deceased wife was having an affair. His growing obsession starts to threaten the well-being of the rest of his family.

This film is all about atmosphere, the Icelandic mist, the music, the landscape. This is ultimately a film about manhood and revenge. It is primarily the technical aspects of this film that we love. The way Palmasson and his team capture the vagaries of gloomy Icelandic mists as well as majestic sunlit landscapes, but with the emphasis on image depth and warm colors.

THE TRAITOR (28 June – 5 July) directed by Marco Bellocchio and starring Pierfrancesco Favino. A masterful telling of the real-life story of Tommaso Buscetta, the main informant in the ‘Maxi’ (Sicilian Mafia) Trial in Palermo in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s.

Marco Bellocchio is an immense filmmaker and in a way, this is his own personal “The Godfather”. His epic masterpiece. The reconstruction of the ‘Maxiprocesso’ (the biggest trial in Italian history against the Sicialian mafia) and the court in Palermo is so impressive that we advise watching the film and then watching the real recordings of the trial -available in Youtube-. If you love the world of the Cosa Nostra, you would love this film. If like us, you were not particularly interested in Mafia stories, you will after watching this film based on real facts and characters (Tommaso Bruscetta, Judge Falciani, Totto Riina…)

CAPITAL IN THE 21ST CENTURY (3 – 5 July) directed by Justin Pemberton and based on the best-selling and one of the most powerful books of our time, written by French economist Thomas Piketty. This UK premiere is an eye-opening journey through wealth and power that breaks the popular assumption that the accumulation of capital runs hand in hand with social progress, shining a new light on the world around us and its growing inequalities.