At 63 years old, the Edinburgh International Film Festival is one of the three longest established festivals in the world after first Venice and then Cannes. (It’s actually the oldest continually running film festival, having never missed a year, unlike the other two.)

It may be the poor relation to its French and Italian cousins when it comes to star-spotting and column inches — and, let’s face it, the weather — but since Hannah McGill took over as artistic director three years ago it has at least skipped out of the shadow of the cultural behemoth that is the Edinburgh Festival and Fringe. It now seems like a proper festival and not just another sweaty programme guide to plough through come August. It’s fresh and digestible and stimulating — and something to do in June.

This year’s event attracted controversy after the organisers bowed to pressure from Ken Loach and the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign and returned a £300 grant from the Israeli Embassy. The money was intended to pay for Tali Shalom-Ezer, a graduate of Tel Aviv University, to travel to Scotland for a screening of her film Surrogate. The decision divided the cinescenti but at least it got them talking.

This week it was announced that the festival will give a last-minute screening to Lars von Trier’s Antichrist, which stars Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg as a couple who, after the death of their child, spend their days brutalising themselves in a cabin in the woods.

But it’s not all sex, violence and self-mutilation — the programme includes 23 world premieres, among 135 features from 33 countries including documentaries, shorts and animation.

Mexican actors Diego Luna and Gael Garcia Bernal will be in Edinburgh tonight for the British premiere of Carlos Cuaron’s Rudo y Cursi, about two football-mad brothers in search of fame and fortune. Ashton Kutcher does a turn as a gigolo in Spread, the new comedy from David Mackenzie, and Mary Sweeney, the editor of several David Lynch films including Mulholland Drive, is showing the world premiere of her directorial debut, Baraboo. The Crimson Wing, meanwhile, is an utterly absorbing nature documentary about the life cycles of flamingos in Tanzania.

It’s all there and it doesn’t have to share the stage with anybody.

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