Marc Turtletaub On His Sprawling Scottish Road Movie ‘Borges and Me’ — Edinburgh
Marc Turtletaub’s Borges and Me will screen out of competition at the Edinburgh International Film Festival, marking the veteran filmmaker’s return to directing features. Adapted from Jay Parini’s memoir, the Scottish road film follows a University of St Andrews postgraduate travelling through the Highlands with Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges, and represents an unusually large-scale UK independent production.
Turtletaub said he discovered the book while on holiday in Hawaii and travelled its route from St Andrews to Orkney before securing the rights, identifying potential locations en route. The film was shot across 61 Scottish locations and financed as a co-production between the Netherlands, Belgium, the UK and the US; Fionn Whitehead and Chilean actor Luis Gnecco lead a cast including Alan Cumming, Freya Mavor and Peter Mullan.
- Borges and Me premieres out of competition in Edinburgh.
- The film adapts Jay Parini’s memoir.
- It used 61 locations across Scotland.
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Jorge Luis Borges was an Argentine writer known for short stories and essays that explored ideas such as memory, time and imaginary worlds. By the 1970s, when the story is set, he was internationally famous and had lost most of his sight.
The film is based on a memoir by American poet and writer Jay Parini, who was a postgraduate student at the University of St Andrews in Scotland when he spent several days travelling with Borges. Their journey took them through parts of the Scottish Highlands and islands, providing the basis for a road story about an unlikely meeting between a young student and an established author.
Marc Turtletaub is a US producer and director whose work has included independent films such as Little Miss Sunshine and Gods Behaving Badly. Edinburgh International Film Festival is one of the UK’s long-running film festivals, where films are shown to audiences and industry figures, with some titles competing for awards and others presented outside the competition.