Borges and Me: New film tells story of writer’s 1970s tour of Scotland

Borges invited himself along on Parini’s planned trip to Orkney to meet poet Mackay Brown. On the way, they stopped off at Lower Largo, Culloden, Loch Ness and Dunfermline (scene of the notorious book-licking).

Borges liked to imagine himself as the fictional Spanish knight Don Quixote, criss-crossing the Highlands with Parini as his squire and companion Sancho Panza.

He even nicknamed Parini’s borrowed Morris Traveller Rocinante, after the clumsy and aging horse from Miguel De Cervantes’ 17th Century novel.

The car used in the film was snapped up as a souvenir after filming by Alan Cumming.

Director Marc Turtletaub had previously been to the EIFF with his film Puzzle, which starred Kelly Macdonald as a housewife who becomes a professional jigsaw puzzle solver.

And he was in no doubt that Borges and Me had to premiere there.

“We had a whole cast of wonderful Scottish actors. I’d always wanted to work with Alan Cumming, Peter Mullan and John Gordon Sinclair – since Gregory’s Girl,” he says.

“Morven Christie, Freya Mavor, this wonderful cast and an all-Scottish crew. It’s truly a Scottish movie.”

For Parini, it was an even stranger experience to return to his alma mater of St Andrews, transformed to look like it did in the 1970s, and to see the people he remembered come back to life.

“It’s amazing how memory is supplanted by reality and pretty quickly the actors took the place of reality,” he says.

“Peter Mullan doesn’t look that much like George Mackay Brown but he absolutely embodies him. And suddenly I do see Borges as Luis Gnecco and I almost see myself as Fionn Whitehead, although he’s a lot nicer looking than I am.”