THIS year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival looks set to be one of the best, according to artistic director Mark Adams.

Speaking to the National, he said the festival had “kicked off well” last week with the preview of Toy Story 4 and opening film Boyz in the Woodz.

“There have been full houses, good guests, late nights and there is a real sense of momentum,” he said. “You never can tell but it looks like being one of the best. It certainly feels that way as we have had a lot of good coverage and good feedback.”

On Thursday, Culture Secretary Fiona Hyslop hosted film industry movers and shakers from around the world at Edinburgh Castle.

The special guests included Angus Macfadyen, the Scottish film star known for playing the Bruce in Braveheart. His new film, Robert The Bruce, premieres at the festival today and will be in cinemas nationwide on June 28.

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Also showing today is Balance, Not Symmetry, a cinematic tribute to art, music and Scotland, particularly Glasgow. It was made in conjunction with Biffy Clyro who worked on both the storyline and the score and is nominated for the 2019 Michael Powell Award for Best British Feature Film.

Other highlights at the festival include the world premiere of Best Before Death, a documentary about the legendary Bill Drummond, the Scottish musician, artist and provocateur who (in)famously burned £1 million of the money he made from routinely topping the charts with the KLF. The screening on Thursday will include a special performance by Drummond and actor Tam Dean Burn.

Tomorrow and Wednesday sees the UK premiere of Scheme Birds which is nominated for the best documentary feature film award. It tells the real-life story of teenage “scheme bird” Gemma who never wants to leave Motherwell, where she relishes life with her jailbird boyfriend, Pat, despite the fact her grandfather disapproves of him.

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The thriller Strange But True starring Brian Cox receives its world premiere tonight and centres on a woman who finds herself pregnant five years after the death of her boyfriend. She confronts his grieving family with the idea the child could be his but the truth turns out to be far more terrifying than they had ever imagined.

On June 29, David Tennant and Michael Sheen can be seen in all six episodes of Good Omens, a TV series adapted from the book by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. Special guests are expected to attend.

The festival is also presenting The Woman by Scottish writer, director and actor Pollyanna McIntosh together with her brand-new film Darlin’.

She will talk on Wednesday (26) about her work which includes her starring role as Jadis in AMC’s hit post-apocalyptic TV series The Walking Dead.

Another one of the festival’s In Person events features award-winning actor and producer Jack Lowden who started out in Scottish Youth Theatre in Edinburgh before playing Peter Pan at the King’s Theatre when he was 12-years-old.

Rising to fame after portraying Nikolai Rostov in the BBC mini-series War & Peace, he went on to star in Tommy’s Honour and a United Kingdom (2016) before playing an RAF fighter pilot in Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk.

He won the 2018 Bafta Scotland award for Best Film Actor for his role in Calibre, before going on to star in Mary Queen of Scots and Fighting with My Family.

Other premieres at the festival include Skins, starring Jamie Bell, which is based on the true story of Bryon Widner, a neo-Nazi raised by a family of white supremacists.

Olivia Colman stars in Them That Follow, a fascinating drama set against the strange – but true – backdrop of an extreme Appalachian Pentecostal group that uses venomous snakes in their ceremonies and believes women should be subservient to men and God is more important than medicine.