EXCLUSIVE: With the TV Festival leaving Edinburgh for the first time in its 51-year history, organizers in the Scottish capital are refusing to rest on their laurels.

Deadline can reveal that early-stage plans are afoot to launch a new TV festival in Edinburgh. These plans have been hatched prior to the final one taking place in less than a month’s time and are understood to have been discussed at a recent roundtable with figures from the local sector.

Screen Scotland, the body that represents the interests of the Scottish film and TV industry, commissioned a piece of work earlier this year examining what a new fest might look like along with the implications of the TV Festival’s relocation for the Scottish screen sector and wider Edinburgh festivals landscape. The expectation from many was that Edinburgh would lose its role as host city to Greater Manchester, home of new UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham, and organizers in Edinburgh wanted to get ahead of the game.

Rowan Woods, the former creative chief at the Edinburgh TV Festival, has been leading on this work for months as an independent consultant. Woods, whose role was limited to the research and report itself, has just reported back to Screen Scotland with a set of recommendations and range of options.

While we have not seen the recommendations, Deadline is told that Woods delivered a number of them and they are varied. They were discussed at a roundtable last week in Glasgow with around 20 figures from the local TV industry, we understand. The decision whether to push on with a new festival now lies with Screen Scotland. We hear an announcement could be made in the coming weeks, possibly before the final TV Festival starts on August 25.

A Screen Scotland spokeswoman told Deadline the body has been “working with partners since the spring to explore options should the TV Festival’s board decide – as it now has – to break with the event’s history and move the festival to England.”

The spokeswoman added that Screen Scotland is “looking at the opportunity for innovation in August provided by the TV Festival’s departure and exploring the best way to continue to support Scotland-based production businesses to access key TV decision makers in Edinburgh during August.” Were this new Edinburgh fest to run in August, which given the timing of the world-famous Edinburgh Fringe would make perfect sense, it would be parking its tanks almost directly on the lawn of the Greater Manchester TV Festival, which will also likely take place in August.

The relocation of the TV Festival has been a huge story for the industry this year and connected sources said there is now a political will in Scotland to get behind another event. Scottish government officials were clear to TV Festival executives and its board members during the bidding process that they would back a new event if Edinburgh lost the fest, we understand.

Our story also comes as the Edinburgh International Film Festival expands. Deadline revealed last month that the fest is launching a conference, with first speaker set as BFI chief Ben Roberts, while the majority of last year’s competition titles landed distribution in the UK and U.S.

“The world comes here in August”

Unsurprisingly, in what is an incredibly connected Scottish TV industry, there have been rumblings and mutterings about the potential for a new festival for weeks.

Deadline spoke to a number of executives, all of whom had heard these rumors but were split on the shape they thought a new fest should take, or whether Edinburgh should host one at all.

One indie boss, who has been heavily involved with the fest over the years, said the Edinburgh Fringe in August allows the city to offer something “different and unique.”

Organizers of any new fest must therefore think big, think global and be talent-led, this source said, providing something that contrasts with other UK industry events that have become a crucial part of the annual TV calendar like Content London, the London TV Screenings and the Creative Cities Convention, along with, of course, the new Greater Manchester TV Festival.

“The world comes here in August,” said the indie boss. “American agencies, book publishers, high-profile talent and decision makers arrive in Edinburgh and want to be there. If there’s a date in your calendar that allows you to have fun and maybe find the next [Baby Reindeer creator Richard] Gadd, well which would you choose?”

This indie boss put forward the argument made by many prior to the fest relocation decision being made, which was that relocating the fest would sever talent pipelines by ending the TV Festival’s alchemy with the Fringe. Speaking to Deadline back in March, a frustrated Jon Thoday, who runs agency-producer Avalon, said “no-one from Avalon [will be going to the TV Festival in Greater Manchester] if I’ve got anything to do with it.” His argument goes that TV commissioners and executives discover the talent of tomorrow like Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Gadd and many more via the Fringe when they come to the TV Festival.

On the other side of the coin, one Scottish industry executive said a new fest gifts an opportunity to think locally.

“I think the money would be better spent on helping freelancers or production companies with training,” he added. “We could do a freelancers festival that is more sustainable and affordable.”

This person questioned whether those in charge of the new fest will opt for a “glamor project” over their more local proposal.

However, a different indie boss based out of Scotland pondered whether a local fest would feel “small, parochial and poorly attended” when compared with the might of the relocated TV Festival.

In difficult times and with commissioning opportunities dimming, this source queried whether there needs to be a festival at all.

“It’s too late,” they mused. “If there is any spare money honestly I would spend it on grants to enable good quality program ideas to happen. We need to create jobs for freelancers and production companies.”

Regardless of its potential to be seen as a break from the past, any new fest would have big shoes to fill.

The Edinburgh TV Festival has spent 50 years attracting thousands of the great and the good of the industry along with plenty from the other side of the pond including, just last year, Hollywood royalty in Shonda Rhimes and Tina Fey. Its annual MacTaggart lecture is often a headline grabber and it always features talks from the top network heads including the new BBC Director General this year for what will be his first big set-piece address.

In what is a crowded UK events calendar, the Edinburgh – soon to be Greater Manchester – TV Festival clearly remains one of the year’s focal points. Industry eyes are trained on what happens next. Work has already begun.

EXCLUSIVE: Studiocanal and Trésor Films have unveiled a new image of Marion Cotillard and Théodore Pellerin in Nicola Garcia’s Milo to coincide with the film being announced for competition in San Sebastian Film Festival’s 74th edition in September.

Studiocanal, which co-produces and is handling international sales, has also posted a handful of early deals on the work with the film acquired for Canada (Mongrel Media), Switzerland (Frenetic), Switzerland (Frenetic), Greece (Spenzos), Portugal (Lusomundo), CIS (Capella) and Ex-Yugoslavia (MCF). Studiocanal will handle the release in Germany.  

Billed as a tale of “buried wounds, impossible choices and the fragile hope of rebuilding the bonds that define us”, Milo stars Cotillard as a woman called Alice who arrives in a quiet provincial town and takes a job at a local café, blending easily into a life that isn’t hers.

It soon becomes apparent that her presence is no coincidence. She is there because of Milo (Pellerin), a young mechanic who works at a nearby garage. To him, Alice is a stranger. To her, he is someone tied to a past she has never truly left behind.

It has been a high profile year on the festival circuit for Vie en Rose Oscar winner Cotillard who was at Cannes in May in Guillaume Canet’s Karma and Bertrand Mandico’s Roma Elastica.

She previously worked with Garcia on her penultimate film, the post-WW2 romantic drama  From the Land of the Moon.

“The new role is diametrically opposed to the role of From the Land of the Moon.  There was an emotional romanticism in that film, while here, on the contrary, it’s a much quieter role, contained, and deeply felt,” Garcia told Deadline of Cotillard’s role back in February.

“There’s a silence filled with emotions and confessions that are difficult to express. You can sense her character has grown accustomed to the silence but is also grappling with it. It’s a real balancing act and it takes a great actress to pull that off.”

Co-star Pellerin has made waves over the past year for for his performance as a young man diagnosed with throat cancer in Pauline Loquès’ 2025 Cannes Critics Week title Nino, for he won the Best Male Hope Cesar in February as well as the Louis Roederer Foundation Rising Star Award.

Further cast members include Artus (A Little Something Extra), Alexis Manenti (Undercover), Anne Brochet (Cyrano de Bergerac), Éric Elmosnino (The Belier Family) and Charles Berling (What’s In A Name).

Garcia directs from a screenplay she co-wrote with longtime collaborator Jacques Fieschi, with the collaboration of Laurette Polmanss and Olivier Demangel.

The film marks the fourth collaboration between producer and Trésor Films head Alain Attal and Garcia, after Charlie Says, A View of Love and From The Land of the Moon.

The film is co-produced by Canal+ subsidiary Studiocanal – which holds worldwide distribution rights and handles worldwide sales – with France 3 Cinéma, Marcel Films and Artémis Productions, with the support of CANAL+, Ciné+ OCS and France Télévisions.

The picture will be released in French cinemas on January 20, 2027.