Cannes has its red carpet and paparazzi, Venice its speedboats and high couture, Sundance its ski-wear and deal-making. The Edinburgh International Film Festival, by contrast, offers a nobility of spirit, embodied in the austere drama of the city’s neoclassical architecture. Edinburgh is part of the ancient elite of film festivals; it’s not the oldest, but it has run continuously from 1947, even if the coronavirus forced the 2020 edition online. Having been consigned to a lonely existence in June (as part of a strategic plan for the British film industry that was formulated a decade and a half ago), the film festival is now nestling in August, back among Edinburgh’s other globally famous festivals; whether its new incarnation can carry the torch remains to be seen, but we’d be all the poorer if it had disappeared for good. —Andrew Pulver