EIFF 2021 will close with Billy Crystal comedy
The Edinburgh Film Festival will come to a close with a few laughs this year with Here Today, the new comedy written, directed by and starring the legendary Billy Crystal
We at The Skinny are very excited to discover what shape Edinburgh International Film Festival will take this year. After the cancellation of the 2020 event thanks to COVID-19, the 2021 festival looks to be a bridging edition, with Nick Vardy, the co-Founder and co-CEO of Park Circus, taking the reins this year as a guest programmer ahead of Kristy Matheson taking over and beginning a new era of EIFF as its new Creative Director.
The first title announced for this year’s edition is Billy Crystal's Here Today, which will bring the curtain down on the event on 25 August. This is Crystal’s first time back in the directing chair since the 1995 romantic comedy Forget Paris, in which he also starred. Crystal takes the lead in Here Today too, playing a veteran comedy writer who forms an unlikely friendship with a New York singer, played by comic firecracker Tiffany Haddish. A buddy comedy of sorts, Variety describes Here Today as “a friendly, adult-skewing, tart-witted but never nasty, jokes-and-hugs-built-around-a-serious-crisis character study.”
"I'm thrilled that Here Today has been selected to close the Edinburgh International Film Festival 2021,” says Crystal. “To have an audience sit inside a cinema together and share the experience of this film after these unusual times makes me very happy.”
It’s not quite clear yet if Crystal will be able to make the trip to Edinburgh to present the film in person: with the event still over six weeks off and COVID still causing havoc with international travel, who knows? However, if Crystal does manage to make it to the Scottish capital, we hope he’s able to participate in one of EIFF’s famous in-person career interviews. With five decades of Hollywood stories behind him, including from the sets of This is Spinal Tap, The Princess Bride, City Slickers, Analyze This, Monsters Inc and of course the brilliant When Harry Met Sally…, a sit down with Crystal would make for a classic chat, surely.
EIFF will take place 18 to 25 August. Tickets for the Here Today Closing Gala will go on sale 28 July, when the full EIFF 2021 programme is revealed.
For more info, head to www.edfilmfest.org.uk