For Scottish director Paul Wright, “Mission” began with a feeling.

“For the first time with a film I’ve made, it was kind of tapping into a feeling,” he tells Variety. “More so than plot or story, it was just that feeling that some of us get sometimes of feeling maybe disconnected from the world and feeling you need more. You need something more.”

Starring George MacKay as Dylan, an alienated man who pushes himself toward increasingly extreme experiences in a bid to evade death, “Mission” will have its world premiere in competition at Edinburgh Intl. Film Festival. Rosy McEwen co-stars as his estranged sister Claire.

The film is backed by BBC Film, Screen Scotland and Ffilm Cymru Wales with National Lottery funding. A co-production between Early Day Films and 65 Wilding Films, it was developed with Screen Scotland and BBC Film. Producers are Kate Byers, Linn Waite, Alex Thiele, Marie-Elena Dyche and Lowri Roberts, while Blue Finch Films handles worldwide sales.

For Wright, Dylan’s increasingly dangerous behavior grew out of a romantic ideal: the desire for an “all or nothing” existence.

“There’s that contrast of what he’s feeling and this desire for sensation, and I think within that it can slide from light to dark quite simply,” Wright says. “Where do you stop? What’s the limit?”

Dylan’s desire to feel and to live propels him toward the anarchic.

“In this kind of uber-capitalist world we live in, we’ve all fallen into certain patterns that, for a lot of people, aren’t fulfilling,” Wright says.

As traditional religion has declined and work, money and capitalism have occupied more of that space, Wright became interested in a culture of “just surviving, just getting by.”

“How do you feel something when you’ve been kind of numbed to the modern world?”

The film pushes Dylan toward what Wright calls the “thin line between transcendence and transgression.”

“It becomes a kind of epic within one character: all or nothing, heaven or hell,” he says. “How far do you go, and where do you stop, when your goal is a feeling?”

Music, movement and Dylan’s body take on an almost ritualistic function as he searches for sensation.

“It is tapping into trying to reach a level of ecstasy or rapture,” Wright says. “That primal energy maybe a lot of us have moved away from.”

That impulse has roots beyond cinema. Wright drew inspiration from performance artists including Chris Burden and Marina Abramović, as well as Dadaism and the alternative music he discovered while growing up in a small village in Fife.

Encountering work outside the mainstream could feel “almost like a religious experience,” he recalls.

“Oh my God, that really connects with me in a way that nothing has before,” Wright says. “It became this almost obsession to seek out this alternative culture.”

He sees outsider figures such as radical performance artists as “modern-day shamans,” willing to disturb accepted patterns in the hope of revealing another way of living.

“Sometimes it can become uncomfortable when someone rubs up against that, or challenges that,” he says.

Dylan ultimately directs that challenge inward.

“He feels he has to go as far as he possibly can to complete his own journey,” Wright says. “It’s about that challenge of the self and going into his own darkness.”

But “Mission” also gives Dylan an emotional tether in Claire. McEwen, who broke out in “Blue Jean,” plays the estranged sister whose presence reconnects him with childhood and an earlier sense of possibility, before the constraints of adulthood began to close in.

“There was a simplicity in the world,” Wright says. “It felt anything was possible at that stage, compared to the modern world kind of beating them down over the years.”

Claire grew in importance during the making of the film, becoming both a counterpoint to Dylan and its emotional anchor.

“They’re both the same side in some ways. They’re both struggling,” Wright says. “There are things we all need, connection and meaning.”

“Mission” reunites Wright and MacKay more than a decade after “For Those in Peril,” Wright’s feature debut, which premiered in Cannes Critics’ Week.

“Obviously I knew what George would give us, that he would give us his all,” Wright says.

Wright’s 2017 archive documentary “Arcadia” also shaped his approach to “Mission,” reinforcing his conviction about what cinema can do beyond conventional storytelling.

“I do see film as a sensory medium, and this idea of trying to create emotions through images and sounds excites me more than anything in cinema,” he says.

“It’s not about A to B to C plot progression.”

Instead, “Mission” moves vertically into Dylan’s psyche, where memory, dreams, fear, imagination and reality begin to merge.

“They become these different streams of consciousness within a single character,” Wright says. “Maybe not discerning too much on which is which. It becomes this quite immersive experience, hopefully, for the viewer.”

Shot in and around Glasgow in 2024, the film also gave Wright the opportunity to foreground the city as a specifically Scottish setting.

“It has a character of its own. Its own personality,” he says.

After a lengthy gap between narrative features, Wright is now developing several projects, and wants to push the instincts behind “Mission” even further.

“There’s something that I’m trying to explore in film,” he says. “How far can I push things to get to the things that I’m most interested in exploring?”

He is aware that this work is not conventional. For Wright, that is part of its value.

“Sometimes it is that stuff that is one step outside,” he says. “My hope is that the people that do connect with it really connect with it.”

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage gambled his seat on the voters of Clacton siding with him over Britain’s political establishment — and won.

Farage regained his seat in Parliament Friday after triggering a highly unusual by-election that he said would allow voters to judge him amid allegations surrounding his finances. His closest challenger was not Labour or the Conservatives, but Count Binface, a satirical candidate played by comedian Jon Harvey who campaigns dressed as a trash can.

Farage captured 22,239 votes, while Count Binface won 9,455, according to the official result published by Tendring District Council. Turnout was 44.37%. Britain’s major political parties declined to field candidates in the contest, which they dismissed as a self-serving stunt.

MEET ‘COUNT BINFACE,’ THE TRASH CAN-CLAD COMEDIAN CHALLENGING NIGEL FARAGE

“I called this by-election because I wanted the people of Clacton and the voters of this constituency to be my judge. Not the mainstream media in Britain…and the political establishment who paint us out to be criminals and bad people every day,” Farage told supporters before the final result was announced. “So I asked the voters of Clacton to be my jury.”

Farage resigned from Parliament last month, forcing the vote as he sought a renewed mandate amid a parliamentary investigation into whether he should have declared a £5 million, or roughly $6.75 million, gift from a billionaire cryptocurrency investor. Farage has acknowledged receiving the money and not declaring it, but maintains he did nothing wrong. The gamble succeeded in returning Farage to Westminster — but it did not make the investigation disappear.

He had previously called the reporting around his finances an “establishment hit job” and said he had followed the rules.

Shortly after the election result was declared, the parliamentary standards investigation, which had been suspended when Farage resigned his seat, was once again listed as active, Reuters reported. Parliament’s current investigations page lists the Farage case as having opened May 13 under Rule 5, “Failure to register an interest.” Parliament notes that the opening of an investigation does not itself mean the rules have been breached.

FARAGE SAYS MASS MIGRATION HAS CHANGED THE UK ‘LITERALLY BEYOND RECOGNITION,’ BELIEVES PARTY CAN WIN ELECTION

If the investigation ultimately leads to a qualifying suspension from Parliament, it could trigger a recall petition. Under British parliamentary rules, a suspension of at least 10 sitting days, or 14 calendar days, can trigger that process. A by-election would follow only if the recall petition reached the required threshold of support from eligible voters in the constituency.

Reuters reported that Farage had cast the election as a battle between ordinary voters and an establishment determined to discredit him. But with Labour, the Conservatives and other major parties refusing to participate, his principal opponent became Count Binface — whose policies included capping the price of ice cream cones and conscripting anyone using a speakerphone on public transportation.

Farage nevertheless framed the result as a sweeping rejection of his political opponents.

“Today, the voters in Clacton have stuck two fingers up to the entire political establishment,” he told supporters.

Alan Mendoza, founder and executive director of the London-based Henry Jackson Society, and an advisor to Farage, offered a similar interpretation of the result.

“A tremendous result for Nigel Farage in Clacton,” Mendoza wrote on X Friday. He argued that Farage’s increased raw vote total despite the boycott by major parties showed voters had resisted efforts to turn them against the Reform leader, calling the result a “spectacular two fingered salute” to his critics.

Farage did not appear at the official vote declaration, saying police had advised him there was a campaign to disrupt the result. GB News later reported that Essex Police said it had not told any candidate not to attend the declaration.

“I’m damned if I’m going to stand on the stage having won a resounding victory … and be demeaned and humiliated by nobodies,” Farage said before the count was completed.

The election comes at a more complicated moment nationally for Reform UK.

BRITISH PRIME MINISTER KEIR STARMER FACES POTENTIAL LEADERSHIP CHALLENGE FROM NEWLY-ELECTED ANDY BURNHAM

After holding a lengthy lead in national opinion polling, Reform has seen its support decline, Reuters reported, citing both the controversy surrounding Farage’s finances and a rise in support for Labour since Andy Burnham became prime minister last month. Reuters said Labour was leading Reform 28% to 25%, while Reform also faces competition on the right from the Conservative Party and Restore Britain.

Still, Farage increased his raw vote total from the 2024 general election. He received 22,239 votes Friday, compared with 21,225 in 2024, an increase of 1,014 votes despite lower turnout, according to GB News.

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For now, Farage has the seat back and the renewed mandate from Clacton voters that he sought.But the parliamentary investigation he was fighting is back as well.

The US has not confirmed the revocation, which comes amid crackdown on Mexican politicians with alleged ties to cartels.

The son of former Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has accused the United States of revoking his visa in a politically motivated manoeuvre.

Andres Manuel Lopez Beltran made the allegation late on Thursday in a public letter addressed to US President Donald Trump and posted on social media.

He accused US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and his deputy, Christopher Landau, of ordering the visa revocation.

“There is no reason whatsoever to justify such an arrogant action,” Lopez Beltran wrote to Trump. “It is worth emphasising that these officials have no evidence against me regarding any immoral or criminal act.”

The US State Department has not publicly responded to his claim.

His letter comes as part of a trend of visa revocations from the US. Several Mexican officials, across the political spectrum, have had their visas cancelled, as part of what the Trump administration characterises as a broad crackdown on individuals linked to drug cartels.

Who is Lopez Beltran?

The 39-year-old Lopez Beltran is a prominent politician in Mexico, having recently stepped down from the leadership of the left-wing Morena party.

His father founded the party in 2011 and went on to govern Mexico as its president from 2018 to 2024.

Currently, another Morena politician, Claudia Sheinbaum, holds the presidency, and Morena boasts decisive majorities in both chambers of Mexico’s Congress.

Lopez Beltran is expected to run for a seat in the Chamber of Deputies next year.

For much of his father’s presidency, Lopez Beltran stayed out of party politics, instead focusing on his chocolate business.

However, he was elected Morena’s secretary of organisation in September 2024, just weeks before his father left office.

In his letter, Lopez Beltran called the revocation “a ⁠⁠crude and perverse act”, saying US officials target Mexican politicians by falsely labelling them as “communists”, “threats to US security” or “narco-terrorists”.

Sheinbaum reacts to letter

On Friday, Sheinbaum said she was unaware of any investigations by Mexican prosecutors into Lopez Beltran.

“This amounts to interference ⁠⁠in Mexican politics,” Sheinbaum said at her morning news briefing. “I see no other reason for it.”

Sheinbaum has also walked a careful line in responding to the Trump administration’s hardline approach to cartels and cross-border crime, pledging to cooperate.

But she has also said she would protect Mexico’s sovereignty from any foreign interference, and while she has welcomed collaboration with US intelligence, she has reportedly declined Trump’s offers of US military action on Mexican soil.

Last month, she also rejected a statement by the head of the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) that her government has ties to organised crime, a frequent Trump talking point.

In April, she decried the US’s decision to charge Sinaloa Governor Ruben Rocha, another Morena party official, with drug trafficking and weapons-related offences.

She has argued that the indictment lacks evidence and that such investigations should be left to Mexican prosecutors.

The Trump administration has accused Rocha’s campaign of having worked with the powerful Sinaloa Cartel, the criminal organisation it considers a “foreign terrorist organisation”.

Rocha announced in May that he would take a temporary leave of absence from his position as governor to defend himself from the charges.