Screen star Saoirse Ronan launches rebooted Edinburgh International Film Festival with Orkney-set drama

The screen star has the starring role in German director Nora Fingscheidt’s film, which the filmmaker co-wrote with Liptrot, whose book won widespread acclaim when it was published eight years ago.

Shot extensively in the Orkney Islands two years in 2022, The Outrun follows a young woman’s efforts to recover from alcohol addiction after coming out of rehab and returning home after a decade in London.

Ronan and her actor husband Jack Lowden, who recently got married in Edinburgh, were both producers on The Outrun, which got its UK premiere at the festival ahead of its release in the UK on 27 September.

Lowden is appearing at this year’s Edinburgh International Festival in the new David Ireland play The Fifth Step. A stage adaptation of The Outrun, which has been adapted by playwright Stef Smith from Liptrot’s book, premiered as part of the EIF programme earlier this month.

The film adaptation by Fingscheidt and Liptrot focuses on the story of Rona, a biology student who struggles to adjust to life back on Orkney after coming out of rehab, and moves to the small island of Papay for the winter as part of her recovery efforts.

Speaking on the EIFF red carpet, Ronan said the book was recommended to her by Lowden while they were in lockdown during the Covid pandemic.

She told The Scotsman: “We were reading three books a week like everyone else at the time. Jack had been familiar with the book from a couple of years before but had never actually read it.

“As soon as he finished it he said to me: ‘This is the next role you need to play.’ 

“I finished the whole thing in two days. I was so in love initially with Amy’s style of writing. It was so non-linear and poetic, but still very easy to follow and connect to. 

“It was about a subject that I could relate to very strongly, as most people can, so we were all in from the very beginning.“This was my first time producing a film. I’d never been involved in the developing or financing of a film before - it was a very new world to me. 

“It was a real education into how an independent film is put together. “It’s difficult and a labour of love, but the pay-off is so much greater as creatively you get to make something that you really want to make.

“Filming in Orkney was one of the best experiences of my life. I loved it. The Orcadians really made the project - we wouldn’t have been able to make the film without them.”

Ronan was already attached to the project when another of the film’s producers, Sarah Brocklehurst, who acquired the rights to adapt Liptrot’s book, sent Fingscheidt a copy of The Out while the writer and director was working in Los Angeles.

Fingscheidt told The Scotsman: “I read The Outrun while I was editing. 

“I was feeling very homesick at the time as I read about this woman who had spent two winters by herself in a tiny cottage at the end of the world.

“It really hit home with me for many reasons. I loved how brutally honest she was about the past, but I also loved how she talked about the place and her family, and loved Amy’s view of the world.

“It was so much more than an addiction story. It‘s a really story about a woman and the place of her birth, the struggle she has with it, the inheritance of mental illness and how the different forms of that can play out in a family.”

Fingscheidt admitted it was a “tricky process” to adapt the book, working closely with Liptrot on the script which, like the book, jumps back and forward in time to tell the story of Rona.

She said: “The book is very free and loose. It doesn’t have a narrative structure from A-Z. 

“It was very important to preserve that, but create a film story that you could follow and feel something for the characters. We had to really pick the moments and then take some creative licence to make it watchable.

“I went through the book twice and colour coded different sections that I really felt had to be in the film. I had different piles of different themes and spent three days arranging them before writing the first rough proposals.

“From then on, Amy and I collaborated quite closely. She would spend hours on the phone with while I was writing. When we were filming, she got access to the rushes day.”

The screening of The Outrun launched seven days of EIFF premieres and special events in the first programme overseen by director Paul Ridd since his appointment in November.

He has told how the festival, the world's oldest continually running celebration of cinema, has effectively been “rebuilt from scratch” this year.

The event will be staged across the Cameo Cinema, which will host a series of “Midnight Madness” premieres, as well as the Central Hall in Tollcross, Edinburgh University’s Inspace complex and the Fringe venues at Summerhall and 50 George Square.

Ten films in the programme will be competing to win a new £50,000 Sean Connery Prize for best feature which has been backed by the family of the Edinburgh-born actor, who passed away in 2020 at the age of 90.

Stars launching new films including Kelly Macdonald and Damian Lewis, who are starring together in new vampire movie The Radleys and comedian Nina Conti, who wrote, starred in and directed the road trip comedy-drama Sunlight.

Special guests include controversial director Gaspar Noe, Oscar-winning editor Thelma Schoonmaker, Trainspotting and Sunshine on Leith producer Andrew Macdonald, and writer, and director Alex Garland, whose films include The Beach, 28 Days Later, who, 28 Days Later, Ex Machina and Annihilation.