The Edinburgh International Film Festival will be launched with Scottish director Lynne Ramsey's new thriller Morvern Callar, starring British actress Samantha Morton.

The festival will close with Al Pacino and Robin Williams new movie Insomnia, directed by Oscar-nominee Christopher Nolan.

British-born Nolan will also be giving a talk, billed as a Reel Life interview.

Christopher Nolan (l) was nominated for an Oscar

His biggest movie to date has been the critically acclaimed Memento, starring Guy Pearce, and for which Nolan was nominated for a best screenplay Academy Award.

The festival, which opens on 14 August, showcases the best in films from around the world over an 11-day period.

The festival will debut a number of big Hollywood movies including Titanic actor Bill Paxton's directing debut Frailty, in which Matthew McConaughey plays a man who tells the FBI his brother may be a serial killer.

Screenings

Revenger's Tragedy, directed by Alex Cox and starring Christopher Ecclestone and Eddie Izzard will also receive its first showing.

Other screenings include The Guru, Rabbit Proof Fence, 8 Femmes and Changing Lanes, starring Ben Affleck and Samuel L Jackson.

One of the highlights of the Edinburgh Film Festival is usually the surprise movie, which this year will be shown on 21 August.

Stars of the movie have been known to turn up to introduce the film.

But there was disappointment in some quarters with the choice of the 2001 surprise film of Planet of the Apes, with Tim Roth flying in to announce the screening.

Some members of the audience left the cinema before the film started because they had already seen the film at preview screenings.

The surprise film is often one about which the audience do not have a great deal of prior knowledge and has seen such hits as LA Confidential and Pulp Fiction debuted.