The Hollywood Reporter Debuts Clip from 'The State of Us' Ahead of Edinburgh Film Festival Premiere
The Hollywood Reporter has exclusively debuted a clip from The State of Us, a British indie film that premieres in competition at the Edinburgh International Film Festival on Friday. The Hollywood Reporter
The film marks the feature-length directorial debut of Ollie Gardner and Jake Harvey, who first met at university before pursuing separate careers in the arts — Harvey in television, Gardner in theatre. Their first film together is a story rooted in lived experience.
Samuel Bottomley plays Frankie, a young man struggling to accept that his best friend Taylor, played by Callum Scott Howells, is dying of cancer. Frankie impulsively breaks Taylor out of hospice care for one last night of fun. The characters are loosely drawn from Harvey's own childhood friendship group, particularly a friend named Jake Andrews, who died from cancer at eighteen.
The supporting cast includes Frances Barber, Safia Oakley-Green, Seamus O'Hara, and Duggal Ram. The film runs ninety minutes and carries a 15+ rating (Edinburgh International Film Festival).
The State of Us will have its world premiere in the Main Competition of the 79th Edinburgh International Film Festival, which runs 14–21 August and opens with Louis Paxton's The Incomer. Festival director Paul Ridd told The Hollywood Reporter he believes the 2026 competition slate is the strongest since the event was rebooted three years ago.
That is a meaningful claim for a festival that has spent the past three years re-establishing itself. Edinburgh has long been a platform for British cinema, and a competition slot puts a debut film in front of programmers, sales agents, and critics who can shape its path to wider distribution — the chain of decisions that determines whether a small film reaches screens beyond the festival circuit.
For Gardner and Harvey, the premiere is also the public unveiling of a story shaped by personal loss. The film does not yet have a distributor attached; a strong festival reception can change that quickly, as buyers at Edinburgh assess which titles warrant acquisition for theatrical or streaming release.
