Brothers Kevin and Andrew Macdonald discussed their respective careers in an ever-shifting film industry on Sunday at the Edinburgh International Film Festival‘s keynote session.
Kevin Macdonald, an Oscar winner for his feature-length documentary One Day in September (1999), is also known for his fiction work, including The Last King of Scotland (2006) and State of Play (2009), as well as Touching the Void (2003) and How I Live Now (2013). Andrew Macdonald, meanwhile, is a producer best known for his collaborations with Danny Boyle and Alex Garland on the likes of Trainspotting (1996), The Beach (2000), Ex Machina (2014) and the 28 Days Later franchise.
The session, hosted by Edinburgh TV Festival boss Rowan Woods, began with a blast from the past: the brothers’ short film that saw them as 20-something-year-olds interview the creatives — including Robbie Coltrane, Sam Fuller and Michael Winner — at the 1992 Edinburgh Film Festival. The pair were pressing industry names on how to get Shallow Grave made. At the end, Sean Connery stars over the phone; Kevin had managed to get hold of the Scottish actor in his trailer while he shot 1993’s Rising Sun in L.A.
The conversation spanned a myriad of topics, namely the projects they are most proud of and the inner workings of getting some of the 21st century’s biggest films over the line. Kevin Macdonald spoke candidly about working with Hollywood A-listers for the first time on political thriller State of Play. After months of rewriting the script with Tony Gilroy (and spending a lot of money), “[We] gave it to Brad Pitt,” Macdonald explained. “And he said, ‘I hate it.’”
“That was just the beginning of a long, very Hollywood [experience],” he laughed. “A certain kind of wasteful Hollywood filmmaking, where they were trying to make intelligent and good films,” he added, referencing how an entire sound stage was knocked through in L.A. instead of shooting on location in Washington D.C., because Pitt wanted to stay near his family. But Pitt’s role eventually went to Russell Crowe, anyway.
Macdonald said about feeling out of his depth filming with huge stars: “I don’t think I’m saying anything out of turn to say that Russell Crowe is quite a difficult man and he would intimidate the studio to such a degree that they wouldn’t actually want to come to set.”
“I would say to the studio, ‘Oh my god, this is a nightmare,’” he laughed again, “‘I can’t control this, man, we’re spending all this money,’ and they’re saying, ‘You’re doing great.’”
He also revealed he had to push for Forest Whitaker to be cast in The Last King of Scotland: “He came in so keen to do this,” he recalled. “He felt compelled to do this part… I saw this very gentle, spiritual man, but there’s something dark, and that was, I think, what he wanted to express. I remember going to Fox Searchlight. They’d said, ‘Forest is totally wrong. He’s so gentle and sweet. He can’t be right.’”
He continued: “It became a bit of a battle. In the end, they relented. It’s one of those great things in life when your actor goes on to win an Oscar, and Searchlight have to admit that you were right. That doesn’t happen very often.” His brother Andrew managed to sneak into the Oscars’ Vanity Fair party that year, pretending to be Kevin, the siblings also revealed, where he gave an interview as Kevin to British broadcaster Sky News.
When asked what kind of projects he finds are worth pursuing in the current climate, Andrew simply gave thanks for finding Garland: “I’ve been very fortunate in the last 10 years, to work with this guy who can come up with a script, literally, in 24 hours. So we spent a lot of time producing his films, what he wants to do, and out of that has come a very good relationship with A24, and that’s really the majority of what we’ve done. Every so often, something comes up that fits in.”
On the difficulty of filming 28 Years Later and 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple back to back, Andrew said: “It wasn’t hard, because there’s some key actors that were in first [part]. That’s why we did it back-to-back. I think the director of the second film, she probably did the hardest thing — because she had to take some elements that were already in place, that weren’t necessarily her […] choice,” he said about Nia DaCosta, whose installment is set for release in January 2026.
The pair fielded a series of questions from the audience towards the end of the session, where Kevin expressed he thought a lot of people in the industry are “overly despondent” about the impact of AI.
The filmmaker also said he would love to be making Richard Linklater’s Merrily We Roll Along, filmed across 20 years with Paul Mescal and Ben Platt. “What a wonderful idea,” he said. “That would be so much fun to do.”
Edinburgh International Film Festival 2025 runs Aug. 14-20.
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