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Comic book writer and filmmaker Mike McCarthy’s latest venture, Cigarette Girl, has its European Premiere at Edinburgh International Film Festival.

“Cigarette Girl is a dystopian noir, a graphic novel come to life. It’s the story of a girl who gives up smoking and starts killing people 3 days later,” says McCarthy, who is also working on a graphic novel which will be packaged with the film. “I will be drawing the comic book myself – so I think I’m the first person to do all three.”

Cigarette Girl takes place in a bleak but stylish future where smokers are confined to the outskirts of cities, and the underworld profits handsomely from the illicit trade in cigarettes.

Is Cigarette Girl a superhero? Sort of. “She’s a woman. Just by being a woman she’s superior to man. She’s already somewhat built to survive.”

McCarthy is no stranger to underground filmmaking himself, and Cigarette Girl may well mark his rise to the big time.

Day 6
Monday was a long but fairly quiet day. I went directly to the Cineworld to catch screenings of…

The Kid, another one of those A Child Called “It” type tales. An abusive childhood, being moved from foster home to foster home, more family drama, a troubled transition to adulthood, and all kinds of dirty dealings along the way. For me it was a bit like a pendulum swing, I cared, then I didn’t, then I was impressed, then I wasn’t. At once dramatic and melodramatic, it was a good story, but didn’t have much in it that you haven’t heard before. If you like those kinds of stories, it’s worth a watch.

After ducking into the wrong cinema for the title sequence of Lola (magical!), I quickly joined The Good Heart, which stars Brian Cox and Paul Dano. Set in New York (without the glitz), it’s the story of a curmudgeonly old man and the young homeless kid with a big heart who becomes his hospital roommate. It’s a humorous drama with a guest appearance from David Cross and – my favourite part – a pet duck. Need I say more? If you’re only going to watch one Dano film this year, I’d go with The Extra Man, but The Good Heart is a good shout.

After an afternoon of leisurely work and a damn good burrito, I headed over to Hair of the Dog at the delegate centre. It’s an hour for relaxing and networking, which on this particular day was followed by the Delegate Film Quiz. An excellent time as always, although my team, The All Day Breakfast Club, was in the lead until we blew an entire round on a gamble. Who knew George Clooney wasn’t the only superstar from Kentucky?

Day 7
A week in and still going strong! The summer solstice treated us to a frankly ridiculous 18+ hours of daylight but it was absolutely roasting.

It was a long afternoon with lots of work to be done, so I didn’t make it to any screenings until 5pm. In the meantime, though, I interviewed Mike McCarthy on Cigarette Girl, Amy Hardie on The Edge of Dreaming (one of the Best of the Fest to be rescreened on Sunday), and the incredibly cool John Stalberg, director of stoner-comedy HIGH School.

After all that, I headed down to the Cineworld for The Brothers Quay Animation Event. Despite having grown up in Pennsylvania and studying animation at Philadelphia College of Art, the identical twins reinvented themselves as esoteric animated filmmakers with a strong Polish influence. Three films were screened: a documentary and two animated films, followed by a discussion with Stephen and Timothy Quay. The event rounded off with a screening of their newly-finished film Maska.

Mr Nice followed, with a premiere screening and introduction from Howard Marks – notorious drug dealer and the subject of the film – alongside leading man Rhys Ifans, co-star David Thewlis, and director Bernard Rose. They also returned for a brief Q&A session after the film. The film itself didn’t quite live up to the hype for me. It’s a well-constructed biopic which glides through 25 years of Marks’ life; but the storyline was predictable with little tension and not much to set it apart from fictional films on the same topic. Ifans was excellent, though, and if it’s your kind of thing it may well be worth a watch.

As always, you can find my live updates on Twitter @robotnic.

Celine Danhier’s debut film, Blank City, is a New York based documentary that reflects upon the underground movements of the late-1970s and the birth of ‘80s cool.

The gritty arts scene of downtown New York and Manhattan is the birthplace of the No Wave movement and Cinema of Transgression. Celine says, “They had a lot of freedom. What was great was that they weren’t just filmmakers, they were artists, musicians, writers, painters. They just wanted to do something new. A lot of them found some super 8 cameras for a couple of bucks and decided to shoot.”

The flashback film continues this trend into the modern age, which began as a grassroots project with three members: Danhier, the director, alongside producer Aviva Wishnow, and editor Vanessa Roworth. In true No Wave style, they swiped their credit cards to buy some equipment and began to shoot.

Danhier received a great deal of support for her original concept. “We didn’t want to make it nostalgic because [the underground scene] was just different,” she explains. “I had a list of 10-15 key people, and perhaps one of them would say yes. Some people did not want to be in the documentary at the beginning, so I didn’t take no for an answer. I was persistent. I ended up interviewing over 40 people.”

The film features many of the prominent figures of the 1970s scene, including cult directors John Waters and Jim Jarmusch, actor Steve Buscemi, Debbie Harry of Blondie, the avant-garde’s Nick Zedd and Richard Kern, and more.

Danier hopes that her documentary will garner interest in the work of filmmakers like Jarmusch, as well as his contemporaries whose films are not widely available.

“What I want to show is that it’s possible to do things like that. I hope that after the screening people will want to pick up a camera!”

Blank City had its UK premiere at Edinburgh International Film Festival this week.