THE distributors of one Scotland’s most successful recent movies has denied snubbing the Edinburgh International Film Festival; instead, it would rather see the movie premiered in the city where it was filmed – Glasgow.
Andrea Arnold’s Red Road – her debut feature and part-funded by Scottish Screen – is to be released in the UK in October, but is not appearing at Scotland’s top film festival, which begins a week on Monday.
The movie was a winner at the Cannes Film Festival in May. But because of the plaudits it received in winning the Prix du Jury, there have been fears that, as part of its sales strategy, distributors, Verve Pictures, would wish to steer clear of Edinburgh to avoid over-exposure to reviewers. The fear has been that, were Red Road to show in Edinburgh as well as Cannes, there would be no reviewers left who hadn’t seen it by the time of its UK release on October 27 – when it probably needs the most publicity.
This again has been denied by the distributor’s PR company Premier, who told Spike: “Verve Pictures wanted to do the premiere in Glasgow, because it was set there. They feel the focus should be on Glasgow.
“It is absolutely not a snub to Edinburgh and it’s not part of a sales strategy. It has always been their intention to go to Glasgow and they’ve stuck with it.”
It premieres in Glasgow on October 25.
