British directors Ollie Gardner and Jake Harvey are premiering their first feature, The State of Us, in Edinburgh’s competition programme. The Bradford-set drama explores grief, male friendship and emotional openness through two young men confronting the impending death of one of them from cancer, offering a counterpoint to harmful ideas of masculinity circulating online.

The film follows Frankie, who takes his best friend Taylor out of hospice for one final night, only for their plans to expose unresolved feelings about their friendship and futures. Harvey wrote the screenplay partly in response to losing a childhood friend to cancer; Callum Scott Howells and Samuel Bottomley lead a cast including Frances Barber, Safia Oakley-Green, Seamus O’Hara, Sunetra Sarker and Duggal Ram. Gardner, 29, and Harvey, 28, met through university rugby, worked across theatre and television, and say they relied on limited independent-film resources to make the project.