The Edinburgh Film Festival’s Midnight Madness strand will close with the body horror The Substance, starring Demi Moore.
Still riding the wave of a nine-minute standing ovation in Cannes, Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance also features Margaret Qualley and Dennis Quaid in a thriller that doubles as a ruthless satire on female body standards and the toxic beauty myth.
The U.K. premiere of The Substance will screen at EIFF on Aug. 20, with further theatrical release details to be announced by MUBI soon. The full program for the event, taking place Aug. 15-20, will launch on July 10.
Paul Ridd, EIFF director, said: “Having experienced the legendary Midnight Madness premiere of Coralie Fargeat’s ferocious debut Revenge at Toronto a few years back, I am truly honored that our first ever Midnight Madness strand at EIFF will close out with her wildly entertaining second film The Substance. Hard to describe this masterpiece, but if we said that it somehow fuses David Cronenberg, Brian Yuzna and Sunset Boulevard into a completely unique, sensory attack on hypocrisy and sexism, then that would only go half-way to describing the wild thrills that await the willing and the eager. Bring it on.”
The EIFF’s brand new Midnight Madness strand will run throughout the Festival in August.
It recently confirmed that its opening night film will be Nora Fingscheidt’s (System Crasher) adaptation of Amy Liptrot’s best-selling memoir, The Outrun, starring Saoirse Ronan.
The name of its short film competition is The Thelma Schoonmaker Prize for Short Filmmaking Excellence. Schoonmaker is celebrated in the industry for her work as an editor on landmark moments in cinema history, collaborating on such films as Killers of the Flower Moon and Goodfellas.