CELEBRATING its 50th anniversary next month, a year ahead of Cannes, the Edinburgh Film Festival will be opened on August 11th by its patron, Sean Connery, who stars in the opening film, the hi tech medieval tale, Dragonheart. Two weeks later, the event now titled the Drambuie Edinburgh Film Festival - closes with Chantal Akerman's A Couch in New York, starring Juliette Binoche and William Hurt.

Among the high profile films screening as galas at Edinburgh are the Cannes prize winners, Lars Von Trier's Breaking the Waves and Shirley Barrett's Love Serenade, along with Peter Greenaway's The Pillow Book, Michael Winterbottom's Jude, Patrice Leconte's Ridicule and John Sayles's Lone Star, while Ireland is represented by Stephen Frears's The Van, Terry George's Some Mother's Son, Gillies MacKinnon's Trojan Eddie, Geraldine Creed's The Sun, the Moon and the Stars and Chris Bould's Joe My Friend.

The festival's claim that it has the world premiere of some of those films is puzzling, given that they already have been seen at Galway Film Fleadh.

An exciting innovation at Edinburgh last year, the Scene By Scene strand returns and features seasons with key film people discussing and analysing their work. This year's very impressive line up of speakers include directors Bernardo Bertolucci and David Cronenberg (although Crash will not be shown), cinematographers Henri Alekan and Jack Cradiff, veteran actress Teresa Wright, documentary maker Nick Broomfield, special effects wizard Euan Macdonald and representatives of Aardman Animation.

In addition, Jarvis Cocker will look at the making of Pulp's pop promos, and Michael Stipe will introduce, the late night world premiere, of REM Roadmovie, a filmed record of Stipe and his band on stage before a home audience in Atlanta, Georgia last November.