From haunted neuroscientists to ghostly patriarchs and doomed mining towns, the 10 world premieres up for this year’s £50,000 ($67,000) Sean Connery Prize for Feature Filmmaking Excellence deliver no shortage of striking worlds.

Presented as part of Edinburgh International Film Festival’s 78th edition, the titles competing for the audience-voted award are fiercely original – many of them debut features – and point to a generation of filmmakers pushing into new terrain emotionally, politically and aesthetically.

“Our approach is always about thinking about what our audiences are looking for,” Paul Ridd told Variety , “and how expansive we can be in terms of the diversity of the program as a whole.”

That boldness shows in “Mortician,” a deadpan yet deeply charged Iranian exile story

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