Aheadinburgh

Every August, Edinburgh is jammed to the gills with visitors attending any number of interlinked festivals. A literary festival, a musical festival, the infamous fringe... of course, a film festival.

From next year, this is set for a shake up. The Edinburgh Film Festival is being brought forward a couple of months, into June.

For various sentimental reasons I feel funny about this plan, but it is probably a very good idea in reality. Falling in August, the festival has been too close to Toronto and Venice, and has surely lost many big premieres to the two of them. It will even be somewhat overshadowed at home - for many the only Edinburgh festival is the fringe.

Until next year's inaugral June selection, we won't know for sure how this will pay off - or not - but my hunch is that we might see a sharp upswing in the festival's relevance, media covergae, exciting bookings and attendance figures. But hopefully not the prices too.