The third installment of the revived Edinburgh International Film Festival is underway and our Managing Editor Kevin Ibbotson-Wight has taken a look at some of the films screening during the festival.

The Night of the 12th director Dominik Moll is back in fatalistic police drama mode in Case 137 (France/ 2025/ 115 mins). Lea Drucker plays a dogged internal affairs cop investigating the near-fatal shooting of a young gilet jaune protester with a flash-bang gun. Inevitably she faces closed ranks from all involved, including the father of her child and his new partner, also a cop.

A police procedure as interested in bureaucracy as brutality, Case 137 is an efficiently made and superbly-edited drama, with Drucker superb as the the morally rigid cop piecing together her case through CCTV, smartphone footage, and good old feet on the ground. As ACAB as a mainstream film dares to be it still comes off as a little wishy-washy, with an on-the-nose monologue delivered by Drucker to make sure all the themes as spelled out. Almost as frustrating as the police’s behaviour itself. 3/5

Like Glengarry Glen Ross set in the London ganglands, Odyssey (Gerard Johnson/ UK/ 2025/ 125 mins) is a punishing, frantic, and overlong drama following a ruthless estate agent Natasha (a committed Polly Mayberly) who finds herself in over her head with violent loan sharks trying to keep her company afloat. But it just so happens there’s a shadowy figure from her past she may be able to call on to even the score.

While it does a decent job setting up its pitiless antiheroine, Odyssey rather runs aground before an abrupt switch to extreme violence late on. Its realist milieu rubs abrasively against Johnson’s penchant for a stygian, Gaspar Noe-type neon-noir hellscape. Similarly, the introduction of Natasha’s guardian angel (of death) The Viking (Swedish character actor Mikael Persbrandt) feels more like something from John Wick than the grounded character study it had previously promised to be. An interesting genre mash-up that doesn’t quite work. 2/5

It’s hard to say who finds a diagnosis of early-onset Alzheimer’s disease tougher in Heidi Levitt‘s achingly tender documentary Walk With Me (USA/ 2024/ 95 mins), its subject 57-year-old graphic designer Charlie Hess, or his wife Heidi and family. Making the decision to film Charlie’s decline and get his perspective while still able, Walk With Me follows Heidi’s visual diary of the process and their attempt to slow his degeneration as much as possible.

Walk With Me is by its nature an emotional watch, as we know there is only one way the story can go. Yet it’s very much a love story as Heidi coaxes her husband through the most difficult think they’ll ever have to face. Charlie is still an articulate man, and is able to verbalise the almost imperceptible ways his mind is beginning to fail him. It’s refreshingly direct and unsentimental, with not a hint of mawkishness and self-pity. Perhaps the most heart-wringing moment is when the weight of it all hits their son in a devastating wave of clarity. Clear-eyed and frank, but buoyed by boundless love, this is an exceptional portrait of an ordinary family finding something extraordinary in themselves. 4/5

Concessions (Mas Bouzidi/ USA/ 2025/ 91 mins) aims to tug at the heartstrings of devoted cinephiles as it hopes they swoon over its beautiful 35mm cinematography. The second part is achieved, but Mas Bouzidi’s comedy about the events at a cinema the day of its closure is too derivative to hit that sweet spot of nostalgic pain.

Almost mirroring the plot of Clerks – right down to cine-literate dialogue, a pair of bickering friends at the concessions stall, and philosophical stoners stood outside the building, with the additional vibe of a Richard Linklater hangout movie, it’s almost job-dropping how every aspect feels screamingly familiar. It’s a shame, as there is some real heart here and wistful themes of wasted time and lost legacy, plus the final screen appearance of the late Michael Madsen. But everything else feels unbelievably cynical. 2/5

All Screening as part of Edinburgh International Film Festival 2025