Charlotte Well’s Aftersun To Open 2022 Edinburgh Film Festival

We are only days away from learning the full programme for the 75th Edinburgh International Film Festival. Today the festival revealed Charlotte Wells’ critically acclaimed debut feature film Aftersun will open this year’s festival.

Friday 12th August will be the Opening Night Gala screening, with the director Wells in attendance. Ironically Wells was also born in Edinburgh making the night even more special. She will be ed by the stars of her film, actors Paul Mescal and Frankie Corio. The premiere will take place at the Vue Edinburgh Omni on Leith Street.

Aftersun tells the story of Sophie (played as an adult by Celia Rowlson-Hall and a young girl by Frankie Corio) who reflects on the shared joy and private melancholy of a holiday she took with her father (Paul Mescal) twenty years earlier. Memories real and imagined fill the gaps between miniDV footage as she tries to reconcile the father she knew with the man she didn’t.

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The film won a Critics’ Week Award during this year’s Cannes Film Festival.  The closing gala, Kogonada’s After Yang also played at Cannes.

Filmmaker Charlotte Wells has said “As a teenager, I spent just about all the money I had saved each summer on tickets to EIFF, sitting on the floor at Fountainbridge in hour long queues for box office opening, leafing through the weighty program which offered my first exposure to independent and international cinema. In 2006, I bought tickets to the Duplass brothers’ The Puffy Chair based on its inch-square picture and synopsis. The Q&A that followed made clear how explicit the connection between filmmakers and their work could be; what personal filmmaking could be. In 2006, I attended the opening night film: The Flying Scotsman. In 2022, I’ll attend again. Edinburgh is home and so is the EIFF. I can’t wait.”

Kristy Matheson, Creative Director for EIFF added “It means so much to have Aftersun open our festival and celebrate a homegrown talent whose artistry is entirely international in its scope and appreciation. My heartfelt thanks to Charlotte and the whole Aftersun team for sharing their film with us. After wowing Cannes Film Festival audiences and critics alike, I can’t wait for EIFF audiences to experience the journey that Charlotte and her incredible cast take us on together.”

The 75th Edinburgh International Film Festival will take place from 12th until 20th August. The full line up will be announced next Wednesday 20th July.