Having celebrated its 60th anniversary last year, the Edinburgh Film Festival enters a new era in 2007. There’s a new festival director in former film critic Hannah McGill, and, as of next year, a new date – the film festival is moving forward from August to June in order to be better placed to compete for films.

This year’s programme represents a very strong first year for McGill, and the visiting talent has been particularly impressive – a combination of actors’ actors (Stellan Skarsgård, Chris Cooper, Samantha Morton); writers’ writers (Irvine Welsh, Mike White and Judd Apatow) and drop dead glamour (Julie Delpy and the magnificent Stockard Chan-ning). But, as always at Edinburgh, the films are the real stars.

In Search Of A Midnight Kiss is the discovery of the festival, an ultra-low budget US indie that has caused a flurry of excitement. The film kicks off with an admirably crass – and extremely funny – masturbation gag. It’s a mortally embarrassing moment for Wilson (Scoot McNairy), who is prompted to take desperate measures to end his crippling singledom. He advertises on Craig’s List for a date for New Year’s Eve. Enter Vivian (Sara Simmonds), a bossy neurotic who machineguns him with casual insults and obscenities. It’s a match made in downtown LA rather than heaven but, somewhere amid the bickering and tantrums, a spark is kindled.

There’s a truly satisfying arc to this terrific little love story: Wilson evolves from disillusioned slacker to an off-beat charmer; Vivian is fabulously rude and obstreperous from the outset; but there are hidden depths to this girl who claims that “books suck”. Although financed with a maxed-out credit card and filmed in grainy black and white, this is a film that has the potential to be a success. The romance between an Irish busker and a Czech immigrant plays out through a series of lovely songs in Once. The film is a genuinely fresh take on the musical, naturalistic and intentionally unpolished. The two leads are played by nonactors – Glen Hansard is the singer-songwriter from The Frames; Markéta Irglová is a young pianist from the Czech Republic – but the chemistry between the pair is convincing. It’s a life and love-affirming story of two strangers who find that they can, literally, make beautiful music.

As always, music is a key theme in the Film Festival’s programme, and nowhere is that more evident than in Control, the feature-film debut of Anton Corbijn, the rock photographer. A searing and sensitive portrait of Ian Curtis, the troubled Joy Division front man, this is incredibly assured and beautifully nuanced filmmaking. Samantha Morton plays Deborah, the teenage wife who Curtis came to resent for her homely lack of adventure; newcomer Sam Riley is a revelation as Curtis. He brings a nervy, hollow-eyed anxiety to Curtis’s characteristic loping dance – he looks like he’s running on the spot, constantly trying to escape himself. Also notable is Toby Kebbell (last seen in Dead Man’s Shoes), whose rants provide moments of levity in this character study of a troubled psyche. Control has been a favourite, making a strong showing in the Standard Life Audience Award poll so far.

But the current leader in the race for the Audience Award is one of the festival’s other real treats. Ratatouille is a return to form by Pixar, the animation studio, after the disappointment that was Cars. The message is that it’s time we paid a little more attention to what we eat, that things like seasonality and provenance are more important than convenience and, repeated like a mantra, is the maxim, “Everyone can cook”. That includes Remy, left, a sewer rat with a sophisticated palate who dreams of stardom as a chef in Paris. It’s one of several high profile titles at the festival – a sign, perhaps, that McGill’s ambitions are to take the Edinburgh Film Festival to bigger and better places.