Borges and Me Screens at Edinburgh: Turtletaub Interview
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- Marc Turtletaub directs 'Borges and Me,' screening this weekend in an Out of Competition primetime slot at the Edinburgh International Film Festival
- The film adapts Jay Parini's memoir 'Borges and Me: An Encounter,' following a University of St Andrews grad student on a road trip across the Scottish Highlands with poet Jorge Luis Borges
- Fionn Whitehead and Luis Gnecco lead the cast, joined by Alan Cumming, Peter Mullan, Freya Mavor, John Gordon Sinclair, Morven Christie, and Stuart Bowman
- Turtletaub discovered the book at a Hawaii bookstore while on vacation, then drove the exact St Andrews-to-Orkney route from the book before securing adaptation rights
- The film was a four-country co-production (Holland, Belgium, UK, US) shot across 61 locations in Scotland, with Oren Moverman writing the screenplay and Parini on set daily — once writing lyrics for a Freya Mavor scene within an hour
- Turtletaub's next feature adapts Ben Reeves' 'Everything Was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt,' which hit the New York Times bestseller list in its first week
- Turtletaub has passed company leadership to Tim Foley (his son) and Michael Clark after nearly 20 years, and is developing a low-cost 3D animation and an indie TV pilot called 'Worried' directed by Nicole Holofcener
Why it matters: The film is a rare large-scale UK road movie made viable only through four-country co-production financing across 61 Scottish locations — a production model Turtletaub attributes directly to self-financing through his own company. The project also signals a generational handoff: Turtletaub is stepping back from company leadership while continuing to direct, pivoting toward smaller-scale work like 3D animation and an unsold TV pilot.
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