JUNE and time for that annual question, how stands the Edinburgh International Film Festival? To be honest, that hardy perennial is getting a little old now. And I speak as someone who remembers asking the question in print as long ago as 1996 (when Mark Cousins was taking the reins as director).

The festival has had an up-and-down existence in the 21st century but it's been under the aegis of director Mark Adams for five years now and the result has been solid and at times spottily impressive, with a little bit of flashiness around the edges.

Maybe a little more flashiness wouldn't hurt now and again actually. With the exception of Joanna Hogg's much-lauded The Souvenir and Jim Jarmusch's zomcom The Dead Don't Die, this year's big hitters at Cannes are conspicuous by their absence. No Quentin Tarantino, no Ken Loach, no Terrence Mallick, no sign of the Palme D’Or winner Bong Joon-Ho's Parasite. And wouldn't Pedro Almodovar's autobiographical Pain and Glory have made a great shout for the closing gala? Pedro on Princes Street would be something to see.

But then that's to ask the EIFF to be something it isn't. Edinburgh can't compete with Venice or Berlin or London anymore (if it ever could). It's had to cut its cloth repeatedly over the years. And so while there will be red carpet moments this year - Richard Dreyfuss, Danny Boyle, Timothy Spall and Katherine Parkinson are all due a visit - the truth is in recent years the EIFF has been better at spotting new voices and nurturing British cinema (Calibre and God's Own Country have both been worthy Michael Powell award-winners in recent years).

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That's not to say all its calls have been the right ones (just whisper the words "Scottish Mussel" and watch certain film critics shudder at the memory of Talulah Riley’s romcom which somehow was given a screening in 2015). But this year, between opening film Boyz in the Wood and this year's closing night gala Mrs Lowry & Son (starring the aforementioned Mr Spall), the 73rd Edinburgh International Film Festival will showcase 121 new films, including 18 world premieres, 12 international premieres, eight European premieres and 78 UK premieres from 42 different countries. That’s worth celebrating.

But once you've nabbed your tickets for Toy Story 4 what else should you circle in this year’s EIFF programme? How do you pick and choose what to see? Well, that's the fun of a festival. It’s a pick and mix.

What follows then is a list of educated guesses as to what might be worth catching once the festival kicks off next Wednesday.

Best of British

Joanna Hogg's The Souvenir is the stand-out film in this year’s British strand, although the prospect of Danny Boyle and Richard Curtis working together on Yesterday is certainly intriguing. But look out for David McLean's Dundonian music drama Schemers and Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje's Farming, a drama about a Nigerian boy who ends up with white British foster parents and joins a skinhead gang. The brooding Welsh landscapes and Eleanor Worthington-Cox's screen presence certainly mark out William McGregor's slightly overwrought Gothic drama Gwen.

But this year’s most ubiquitous British talent is probably Jamie Adams who has two movies at the festival. Bittersweet Symphony, starring Suki Waterhouse and Jennifer Grey (yes, that one) is one of a number of Brit romcoms at this year’s festival, while Balance, Not Symmetry is a love letter to Glasgow and Scotland starring Laura Harrier and made in close conjunction with Biffy Clyro who worked on both storyline and score.

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European Dreams

There's a strong-looking European programme this year even before you get to the focus on Spain and the retrospective of the late, great Agnes Varda (if there's a better film than her 1985 film Vagabond at this year's festival we'll all be lucky).

First among equals may be Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck Oscar-nominated Never Look Away which sees the director teaming up again with Sebastian Koch, the star of his Oscar-winning 2006 film The Lives of Others. His latest film is a dramatised version of the life of artist Gerhard Richter set against the history of post-war East Germany. Hopefully it will go some way to redeem the director after the Johnny Depp misstep that was The Tourist.

Other potential highlights include Swedish sci-fi epic Aniara, based on a poem by Swedish Nobel laureate Harry Martinson, which promises suicidal AI, shopping and ritualistic orgies, and Aurora, Miia Tervo's very contemporary love story between a Finnish wild child and an Iranian refugee. You can’t go wrong with a bit of Finnish comedy.

Further afield

Renny Harlin is still best known for directing Cliffhanger and The Long Kiss Goodnight, but these days the American director lives in the far east and Bodies at Rest is his attempt at a Hong Kong thriller. How will he adapt. Harlin’s film might make an interesting double bill with Samurai Marathon which is a Japanese film made by another expat director, Bernard (Candyman) Rose. Rose has taken Philip Glass along with him to provide the score.

Meanwhile, The Fall of the American Empire sees Canadian film-maker Denys Arcand finally complete the trilogy he started way back in 1986 with The Decline of the American. It's a heist movie of all things.

Tashi Gyeltschen's family drama The Red Phallus might be worth a viewing and not just for the title. How often do you get to see a film made in Bhutan after all? And Miranda Nation's Australian psychological drama, Undertow, shot with a largely female production team, promises a punchy take on grief, relationships and, umm, football (Aussie rules presumably).

Real Lives

This year's documentary strand sees new films from Zhang Yang, with Up the Mountain, a portrait of a year in the studio of painter Shen Jianhua, Ellen Fiske and Ellinor Hallin's Scheme Birds, the story of Gemma, a strong-wiled teenager in Motherwell and Ben Asamoah’s Sakawa about internet scamming in Ghana.

Veteran documentary director Nick Broomfield will also visit Edinburgh for an “In Person” event in support of his latest film, Marianne & Leonard: Words of Love, about the romance between Leonard Cohen and Marianne Ihlen.

Cineastes, though, will probably double down on What She Said, Rob Garver's profile of the life and work of legendary New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael and Alexandre O Philippe's Memory: The Origins of Alien, which looks back on the making of Ridley Scott's horror classic which is 40 years old now (yeah, I'm old enough to remember seeing it at the cinemas first time around too. We're ancient, aren't we?)

That is just scratching the surface of what’s available at Edinburgh this festival (and I haven't even mentioned Emmi Tammi's late-night film The Wind which had me at "feminist Gothic-horror western"). They probably won’t even be the best ones. Let’s all come together at the end of the festival and confer notes.

The Edinburgh International Film Festival opens with Boyz in the Wood on Wednesday night. For more information visit edfilmfest.org.uk