George MacKay and Paul Wright Reunite for ‘Mission,’ a Scottish-Hotel Psychedrama Premiering at Edinburgh
Thirteen years after they first teamed up, George MacKay and director Paul Wright are back together on screen with Mission, a British film that had its competition premiere at the Edinburgh International Film Festival on 15 August 2026. The film runs 87 minutes and carries a UK 15+ rating. Variety published its review on 16 August.
MacKay plays Dylan, an aimless Scottish service worker waiting tables at an upmarket hotel. The character alludes to a childhood accident in which he died for four minutes at age seven, and the film folds dreamlike archival inserts into the narrative to suggest his troubled mind. The producers have described it as "a punk exploration of the psyche" following the alienated Dylan — a label that goes back to the project's earliest announcements (Variety, May 2024; Variety, May 2025).
The cast around MacKay is compact. Rosy McEwen plays Claire, Dylan's older sister, who appears largely as a voice on the phone. Emma Naomi is Becky, a kindly colleague at the hotel. Emun Elliott plays James, the smarmy CEO who runs the place. The film was shot in Scotland by cinematographer Dario Swade and edited by Michael Aaglund and Jen Mackie, according to Variety.
For Wright, Mission is only his second narrative feature. His first, For Those in Peril (2013), also starred MacKay. Between the two, Wright made just one film: the 2017 archival documentary Arcadia. His 2010 short Until the River Runs Red won a BAFTA. Wright spoke to Variety about the reunion on 14 August.
The project was among the BFI's 2025 "Great 8" — a slate of British films pitched to international buyers at the Cannes film festival in May 2025 (Variety). At that stage, Mission was being positioned as a market title: a film looking for distribution beyond UK shores. Its Edinburgh premiere, in the festival's competition section, is the first public screening.
Producers are Linn Waite, Kate Byers, Alex Thiele, Marie-Elena Dych and Lowri Roberts, with production credited to Screen Scotland as part of its made-in-Scotland roster. The Edinburgh festival listing (Edinburgh International Film Festival) confirms the 15 August premiere date, the 15+ rating, and the Scottish filming location.
MacKay, known to wider audiences from 1917, has built a career on roles that sit at an angle to the mainstream — quiet, interior, frequently unsettling. Wright's work shares that temperament: For Those in Peril was a folkloric, jagged piece about an outsider in a Scottish fishing community, and Arcadia assembled century of British archive footage into something closer to a fever dream than a documentary.
What makes Mission stand out on the Edinburgh slate is the sheer gap between its director's features. Thirteen years is a long silence in any film industry, and the reunion of a BAFTA-winning short filmmaker with the actor who helped carry his debut carries its own quiet weight. The festival circuit will be the first measure of whether that wait has produced something that travels.
