Edinburgh Film Festival parties tend to be more of the beer and peanuts variety, but the festival’s 60th birthday bash, held last Saturday, was an unexpectedly opulent affair. Held in the National art gallery, the party was a star-studded affair that had Charlize Theron, Tilda Swinton, John Hurt and a rather daunting Brian De Palma on the guest list.

Sean Connery, the festival’s patron, was host of the birthday bash, and demonstrated the correct way to carry off a kilt. Tip: you need to be more than 6ft tall and have the kind of patrician bearing that dissuades those who would mock your knees. Decent legs also help.

Connery has also been watching his fair share of films. He was particularly impressed by the British thriller London to Brighton, which is shaping up to be the Cinderella story of the festival. Lorraine Stanley, the actress whose raw, emotionally acute performance is the heart of the film, was giddy with the excitement at the party for Clerks II. As she looked to where a dressed-down but still sickeningly stunning Theron was chatting with Jeremy Renner, the star of festival films Twelve and Holding and Neo Ned, Stanley laughed about the fact that the following morning she would be heading back to her day job as a waitress.

Another vocal supporter of the Edinburgh Film Festival is Gabriel Byrne, who turns in a blistering performance in Ray Lawrence’s Jindabyne. “It is one of the very few festivals that has not been corrupted,” he says. “Look at Sundance, which was always a place to see independent films that were going to break out. But almost everybody who went this year was talking about how it has become all about goodie bags and Paris Hilton and marketing companies moving in.

“That hasn’t happened at Edinburgh. There’s still a sense of excitement about what might be the next big thing here.”

At the time of writing, the front-runner for the Standard Life Audience Award is the riotous, smutty Clerks II. This is no big surprise given that the film sold out almost immediately and Smith had a fan-boy audience hanging on his every word during his onstage interview. The main competition for the award has come so far from Little Miss Sunshine, a mordant comedy that, in the best tradition of American indie cinema, tackles suicide, despair and OAP smack addiction through the medium of a road trip. A first-rate cast includes Toni Collette, Greg Kinnear and Steve Carell, all of whom subtly underplay the comedy rather than ramming it down our throats. The result is an emotional depth that warms this dysfunctional family portrait from the inside.

Another persuasive argument for the current strength of American indie cinema comes from Twelve and Holding, the director Michael Cuesta’s follow-up to L.I.E. The film bears some initial thematic similarities to another US arthouse musing on childhood, David Gordon Green’s George Washington. Both films look at the impact of the accidental death of one of their friends on a group of kids. But Twelve and Holding is the more structurally unconventional — the death splits the gang and we follow the story of each separate member. It’s a thoughtful, accomplished piece that examines grief as a catalyst and the mixed messages that children pick up from their parents.

Not all the American cinema is as strong. Neo Ned has a painfully contrived conceit — a neo-Nazi falls in love with a black woman who believes she is possessed by the spirit of Adolf Hitler. A film about race hate, mental illness and child abuse has no business being as fluffy and inoffensive as this picture is.

Some of the stronger cinema on show is in the festival’s mini sidebar of new German cinema. Summer 04 is a profoundly uncomfortable study of the sexual rivalry between a woman and the 12-year-old girlfriend of her son. The extraordinary Martina Gedeck gives one of the performances of the festival.

Black Sheep is an anarchic multi-stranded odyssey that gives Clerks II a run for its money on the sexual deviancy front. Windows on Monday is a fascinating, low-key examination of a woman quietly but firmly rebelling against her own life. Less good is 3 Degrees Colder, a film which, for all its visual impact and proficiency, is a rather uninvolving experience.

Finally, a mention must go to the two retrospectives. Mitchell Leisen, the Hollywood director of the Thirties and Forties, has inexplicably faded from cinema history, and the immensely enjoyable sample of his work shown in Edinburgh suggests that the time is ripe for these wonderful movies to be made widely available on DVD for a new audience to enjoy.

The other retrospective, of American cinema from the Seventies, has also thrown up numerous treats.

One film that won’t get its scheduled showing, however, is Cockfighter. The film was removed from the programme after it was discovered that it contravened animal cruelty law. Shane Danielsen, the festival director bemoaned the actions of “a bunch of morons trying to save the life of chickens that died 33 years ago” by blocking the festival screening.

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