Edinburgh Film Festival to celebrate 30 years of Trainspotting

Is Trainspotting a wee bit overplayed in Scotland? Yes. Do we need another ad campaign reimagining the "Choose Life" monologue? No, and I’m looking at you, Lewis Capaldi, Scott McTominay and Adidas. Shouldn’t the Scottish film industry be asking itself why, in the last three decades, we haven’t made more films that are as cool, inventive, groundbreaking and as popular as Trainspotting? Indeed we should. But is the prospect of the film’s incredible cast and crew doing a live commentary to that blistering film in one of Edinburgh’s best venues an enticing prospect? Absolutely. 

That’s exactly what Edinburgh International Film Festival have up their sleeves to mark the 30th anniversary of Danny Boyle’s iconic film: a screening of Trainspotting in Leith Theatre that will feature a live commentary from some of the actors and filmmakers who helped create it. If that’s not enough, the screening will be followed by a club night DJ’d by former Underworld member Darren Emerson and the author of Trainspotting himself, Irvine Welsh. Many of the tunes from the film's memorable soundtrack are sure to feature – think Born Slippy, Lust for Life, Atomic.

The names of the cast and crew who’ll take part in the live commentary have not been announced yet, but it’ll be quite a coup if EIFF manage to bring people like Ewan McGregor, Robert Carlyle and Danny Boyle back together for this huge celebration. I guess it must help that the chair of EIFF’s board is the man who helped get Trainspotting made in the first place: its producer, Andrew Macdonald. “Hard to believe it, but it has indeed been thirty years since we made Trainspotting, and I am delighted that it is heading back to Leith where the whole story began,” says Macdonald. “It is going to be a very special night.”  

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Tickets for this special Trainspotting retrospective are on sale from 10am on 2 Jul; the full Edinburgh International Film Festival programme is revealed on 1 Jul
edfilmfest.org