Edinburgh International Film Festival has been claimed as a success in its new June slot.

Provisional figures for the 62nd festival show the number of tickets sold up by 3% and box-office income up 5% - even though some organisers anticipated a dip in the first year in the new slot while the festival established itself.

"It's fantastic," said managing director Ginnie Atkinson. "We are delighted at the response." She confirmed that the festival would take place in June again next year.

"We had seen this as a three-year plan. We are a new event effectively. We are the film festival but we are in a completely different time slot because we have lost all the crossover audience with the other festivals. But we have got full cinemas and it just feels really busy."

The festival was hoping to increase the number of local people attending screenings to compensate for an expected dip in international visitors, however initial research suggests many film fans are coming from England and overseas.

"People have really embraced it and are coming to the film festival in Edinburgh in June. There is no way we are going back to August, because we now have seen that it's working," said Ms Atkinson.

The festival finished yesterday, with Man on Wire, a documentary about a high-wire walker, winning the Standard Life Audience Award, which has previously provided a springboard to success for the likes of The Full Monty and Billy Elliot.

However, audiences reckoned that The Edge of Love, a high-profile drama about Dylan Thomas's love life starring Keira Knightley and Sienna Miller, was one of the poorest films on show.

It dropped out of the audience top 10 long before the end of the festival, even though the stars had attended the premiere and the film generated a huge amount of publicity.

The awards were presented by festival patron Sir Sean Connery yesterday.