The Incomer, which will open the 79-year-old festival on August 13, is the debut feature of Edinburgh-born filmmaker Louise Paxton, who has family connections with Orkney.
Read more:
The Incomer is one of two feature films made in Scotland recently by Rankin. Brought up in Renfrewshire, Ayrshire and Glasgow, she has made her name in Hollywood and Broadway productions after securing a place at a performing arts school in New York when she was a teenager.
Domhnall Gleeson plays Daniel in The Incomer. (Image: Anthony Dickenson)
Rankin, who starred opposite Eddie Redmayne in Cabaret on Broadway, has been cast in the lead role in a new National Theatre of Scotland adaptation of the classic Scottish novel The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, which will be launched in the autumn.
O’Rourke, who has starred in the Scottish comedies Only Child, Bob Servant, Scot Squad and Dinosaur, also appeared in Ladybaby, a one-off BBC Scotland comedy directed by Paxton, which also featured Half Man stars Richard Gadd and Amy Manson. He previously played former world darts champion Jock Wilson in a stage production.
Also in the cast of The Incomer are Sliding Doors and Four Weddings and a Funeral Star John Hannah, Green Wing and Doctor Who star Michelle Gomez, and Emun Elliott, star of The Gold and Guilt.
The Incomer, which was written and directed by Paxton, opens with Gleeson’s character Daniel, an awkward council worker, arriving on an island to try to evict two siblings who have lived there for decades in isolation.
Director Louis Paxton with The Incomer stars Gayle Rankin, Grant O’Rourke and Domhnall Gleeson at the Sundance Film Festival in January. (Image: Hannah Turner-Harts/Deadline/Getty Images)
Isla and Sandy, who are played by Rankin and O’Rourke, who have lived their lives hunting birds and talking to mythical beings while scaring away outsiders and incomers.
After an initiation ritual and several days on the island, Daniel finds himself increasingly bonding with Isla and Sandy as the characters – who have all experienced isolation, loss and loneliness – lower their guard and embrace human connection.
The Incomer star Gayle Rankin will be leading the cast of the new National Theatre of Scotland production of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie when it launches in October 2026. (Image: Rankin)
When The Incomer premiered at Sundance, the festival hailed it for “sublime deadpan humour, formal inventiveness, a sprinkling of animation and fantastical creatures, and the charm of its oddball characters”.
EIFF director Paul Ridd, who saw the film at Sundance, said: “With wit, grace and intelligence, this striking, unpredictable and beautifully acted Scottish debut dazzled, moved and amused us immensely when we first saw it back in January. We are thrilled to open this year’s edition with a film which embodies such a stirring and inspiring spirit of creativity, empathy and invention in filmmaking. This is precisely the kind of film that EIFF is all about.”
Actor Grant O’Rourke will play Sandy in The Incomer. (Image: Supplied)
Paxton studied at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in Glasgow and the National Film and Television School in London.
He said: “Opening the Edinburgh International Film Festival with my debut feature is a dream come true.
Irish stage and screen star Domhnall Gleeson will play Daniel in The Incomer. (Image: Ian West/PA)
“Screening in my beloved hometown, and the festival where I started as a teenage usher, sharing this story with a Scottish audience, is nothing short of mind-blowing. I couldn’t ask for a more meaningful premiere.”
Speaking in a recent British Film Institute interview, Paxton said: “My mum’s family is from Orkney, the islands north of Scotland.
“We’ve been going there since I was very young. I grew up every summer hanging around Neolithic dig sites and half-sunken shipwrecks in these beautiful, very remote islands that feel like you’re on the edge of the world.
“I always wanted to make something up there, but I got really into reading about abandoned communities.
“There was St Kilda in the far west and various other islands in the Pentland Firth and around Scotland that used to be habited and eventually were abandoned.
“I became really interested in why people made that choice to leave, because I think for mainlanders it can often feel quite romantic.
“The reality, the more I read about it, was actually incredibly challenging, and a lot of these people were leaving for a better life.
“The more I started to look into it, the more I saw the opportunity for this culture clash. And a way to comment on how we live now, and how connected or disconnected we are from other people, despite the fact that we’re surrounded by people all the time.”
The Incomer was shot last year in multiple locations, including Latheron, Wick, Thurso, Bruan, Helmsdale, Lybster, Strathy, Melvich and Lybster. The production received £848,000 from the Scottish Government agency Screen Scotland.
Isabel Davis, executive director at Screen Scotland, said: “Louis Paxton is bringing it home following The Incomer’s triumph at Sundance earlier this year.
“It marks an extraordinarily assured debut feature. This singular story of a remote community on Scotland’s far north coast feels truly distinctive, something that could only have come from here.”
