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Programme Announced Glasgow Film Festival 2026

The 22nd edition of Scotland’s largest film festival will showcase 126 films from 44 countries, with 16 World, European, and International premieres, 68 UK premieres and 18 Scottish premieres taking place between 25 February and 8 March

UK premieres include humanistic drama Rebuilding starring Josh O’Connor, high-fashion title Couture featuring Angelina Jolie, relationship drama Erupcja led by Charli XCX, political thriller The Wizard of the Kremlin with Jude Law, Paul Dano and Alicia Vikander, and Late Fame and The Birthday Party, both starring Willem Dafoe

Scottish premiere highlights include Jim Jarmusch’s Venice Golden Lion-winning Father Mother Sister Brother with Adam Driver and Cate Blanchett, Mark Jenkin’s mysterious drama Rose of Nevada with George MacKay and Callum Turner, and dark thriller The Good Boy starring Andrea Riseborough and Stephen Graham

13 Scottish films will feature, including the world premiere of Molly vs THE MACHINES, the story of a heartbroken father’s quest to uncover the truth behind his daughter’s death, and the UK premieres of dark comedy The Fall of Sir Douglas Weatherford, starring Peter Mullan, and Midwinter Break, written by Bernard MacLaverty and starring Ciarán Hinds and Lesley Manville as a Glasgow couple trying to repair their marriage

Gaelic language is represented with the world premiere of Sailm nan Daoine (Psalms of the People), Jack Archer’s documentary on Scotland’s tradition of Gaelic psalm singing

everybody to kenmure st

For the first time, Glasgow Film Festival (GFF) will open and close with UK premieres of films shot in Glasgow. The festival kicks off with BAFTA-winner Felipe Bustos Sierra’s documentaryEverybody to Kenmure Street, executive produced by Emma Thompson, and closes with James McAvoy’s directorial debut, California Schemin’

The life and work of Marilyn Monroe will be celebrated 100 years after her birth, with a string of the icon’s classic hits shown on the big screen

Glasgow Film Festival (GFF) has announced the full programme for its 22nd edition, with GFF26 running from 25 February until 8 March. The festival will host 126 films across 12 days, including 16World, European and International premieres, 68 UK premieres, and 18 Scottish premieres, with titles from 44 countries and six continents.

GFF is Scotland’s flagship film festival and is run by Glasgow Film, a charity which also runs Glasgow Film Theatre (GFT). The festival is made possible by support from Screen Scotland and the BFI Audience Projects Fund, both awarding National Lottery funding, and Glasgow Life, the charity which delivers culture, events and active living in Glasgow.

Scottish films will open and close the festival, with the UK premiere of BAFTA-winner Felipe Bustos Sierra’s documentary Everybody to Kenmure Street, executive produced by Emma Thompson, about one of Scotland’s most high-profile acts of civil resistance in recent memory, kicking off GFF26 on 25 February. 

Closing the festival on 8 March is the UK premiere of James McAvoy’s directorial debut, California Schemin’, based on the improbable true story of Scottish rap duo Silibil N’ Brains, a.k.a. Gavin Bain(Séamus McLean Ross) and Billy Boyd (Samuel Bottomley).

As well as Hollywood blockbusters, the festival highlights early-career filmmakers, with 42 titles on the programme being a director’s first or second feature. Glasgow Film Festival 2026 (GFF26) will also showcase 50 foreign language films, with 44 languages being represented in the lineup.

This year’s festival marks Paul Gallagher’s first edition as Head of Programme, working alongside Programme Manager Chris Kumar and a team of Programme Advisors who bring additional specialist insight across key areas of the programme. The advisors include Sam Fraser, with a focus on World Cinema; Lauren Clarke, contributing expertise in Documentary; Heather Bradshaw, bringing a specialism in Animation; and Neha Apsara, whose focus is South Asian Cinema.

Glasgow Film Theatre (GFT) will remain as the venue at the heart of the event, with screenings also taking place at ODEON Luxe Glasgow Quay as well as special events happening across the city at Glasgow University Union, Glasgow Women’s Library, and the Pyramid at Anderston.

Scotland on Screen

Sailm nan Daoine (Psalms of the People) – main still – Rob Harmonium-3 (c) Hopscotch Films

The spotlight will be on Scottish cinema this year at the country’s biggest film festival, with 13 Scottish films being showcased. A selection of established and new Scottish talent will feature on the big screen alongside opening and closing films.

Scottish films having their world premiere at GFF26 include Sailm nan Daoine (Psalms of the People), Jack Archer’s documentary about Scotland’s cultural heritage of traditional Gaelic psalm singing. The film follows Rob MacNeacail across Scotland and Ireland as he shares Gaelic language psalms with the community. Additionally, Welcome to G-Town is the debut feature from identical twin brothers Ben McQuaid and Nathan McQuaid, which follows shape-shifting aliens that have landed in Glasgow. The micro-budget sci-fi is firmly Glaswegian with its sense of humour and cast. Made outside the traditional filmmaking pathways, this is the perfect film to see in a cinema with a local audience.

Molly vs the Machines – main still – Credit_ Cosmic Cat

Marc Silver’s documentary, Molly vs THE MACHINES, will also have its world premiere at the festival, with nationwide screenings also happening concurrently. The story of a heartbroken father’s quest to uncover the truth behind his daughter’s death and his fightback against how the most powerful corporations of the modern age operate, the film is distributed by Scottish production company Cosmic Cat and received significant funding from Screen Scotland.

FrightFest, GFF’s resident horror festival, will also open with the world premiere of Vasily Chuprina’s relentless, high-stakes action thriller Jailbroken, a claustrophobic pressure-cooker set entirely within a single prison cell. Co-produced by Scottish production company Up Helly Aa, the film features a formidable Scottish cast led by Bryan Larkin, David Hayman, Shauna MacDonald and Armin Karima.

Other Scottish films having their UK premieres include Edinburgh filmmaker Sean Dunn‘s hotly anticipated debut, The Fall of Sir Douglas Weatherford. Shot on location in Edinburgh and Balerno, and featuring Gayle Rankin, this black comedy stars Peter Mullan as a local history-fixated tour guide who descends into madness as a big-budget fantasy TV show takes over his small town. Iranian-Scottish co-production, Without Permission, by Aberdeen-based British-Iranian director Hassan Nazer, is an intelligent docufiction hybrid about an exiled filmmaker who returns to Iran to shoot a film. The feature is anchored in authentic interviews with a group of Iranian children who reveal their sweetly hopeful dreams for the future.

(L to R) Ciarán Hinds as “Gerry” and Lesley Manville as “Stella” in director Polly Findlay’s MIDWINTER BREAK. Credit: Mark de Blok/Focus Features © 2026 All Rights Reserved.

Filmed primarily in and around Glasgow, Midwinter Break is a touching drama, based on a novel by the same name by Bernard MacLaverty, about a retired married couple who live in Glasgow (played by Lesley Manville and Ciarán Hinds), who find themselves reflecting on the past and considering their future while on an Amsterdam getaway. Partially shot in Glasgow and Perthshire, My Father’s Island spotlights the relationship between a 13-year-old (Woody Norman) and his father (played by Swann Arlaud), as they spend a year together on a remote Nordic island.

Films with ties to Scotland that will have their Scottish premiere at the festival include several standouts. Documentary Super Nature, shot collaboratively across 25 different countries, offers a fresh way of looking at the environment and creatures great and small around us via the glorious and tactile intimacy of vintage Super 8 cameras. Filmmakers based in Oban, Isle of Lewis and Edinburgh are among those who contributed to the film, which also saw partnership from Screen Scotland, co-production from Scottish studio Forest of Black, and co-executive production from Glasgow-based Nikki Parrott of Tigerlily Two. Raoul Peck’s documentary, Orwell: 2+2=5, braids together George Orwell’s biography and the writing of his final book, 1984, on Jura, and features an exploration of its ideas, including doublethink, Big Brother and newspeak, which resonate more than ever today. Completing the selection is The Son and the Sea, shot on location primarily in the Scottish village of Pennan, which sees two best mates travel from London to the northern Aberdeenshire coast. A chance encounter with a Deaf young man who is also visiting proves the catalyst for change in Stroma Cairns’sensitively observed drama.

World and International Premieres

Effi o Blaenau

Set against the wide open landscapes of North Wales is Effi o Blaenau, a Welsh language film adaptation of Gary Owen’s much lauded and widely performed monodrama, Iphigenia in Splott. Directed by Marc Evans, the film follows Effie, a young woman who learns firsthand the personal costs of our societal shortcomings, with a tour-de-force lead performance by up-and-coming actor Leisa Gwenllian.

The festival will also showcase the world premiere of Sinsin and the Mouse_, a sensitive and elegantly shot drama that accompanies a young woman, reeling from the death of her mother, on a trip to Taipei, where an encounter with a young man begins to help her break through her grief; and the international premiere of Steal Away, a psychosexual fairy tale set in an alternate reality, where a Congolese woman’s warm welcome into a grand mansion, owned by the mother of a white woman her own age, slowly reveals a far more unsettling desire beneath its surface.

UK Premieres

With 68 UK premieres at GFF26, there will be a wide array of Hollywood stars gracing Glasgow’s big screens. Angelina Jolie stars in Couture by Alice Winocour, which depicts the world of Parisian high fashion from the perspectives of the working-class women involved.

Charli XCX co-screenwrites, co-produces, and stars in Erupcja, directed by Pete Ohs, where two friends with an explosive relationship meet in Warsaw. The Dutchman, adapted from the Amiri Baraka play on identity, assimilation and racial power dynamics in America, focuses on Lula (Kate Mara), a white woman, and Clay (André Holland), a black man, riding the subway in New York City. Danny Dyer gives a stellar performance in One Last Deal, a twisting and engaging chamber piece about a football agent desperate to close a contract.

The Birthday Party – main still (c) Heretic (main)

Willem Dafoe stars in two of the festival’s films, Late Fame, which follows an author of a poetry collection which gains appreciation years later among a group of young artists, and The Birthday Party, where a billionaire hosts a birthday party for his daughter on his private Greek island. Scotland-born Emma Laird stars in Satisfaction, a tense psychological drama unfolding across two time periods that charts how a young British composer’s encounter in Greece with a sympathetic new friend leads her to confront a buried traumatic event from her past.

Eddie Marsan and Éanna Hardwicke star in crime thriller No Ordinary Heist, as two bank employees who are forced to help commit a robbery to protect their families, inspired by the true story of one of the UK’s largest cash thefts. The Last Viking, an absurdist comedy revolving around a released robber’s attempts to recover his loot, will see Mads Mikkelsen star as the thief’s brother.

Foreign language films by female filmmakers take a prominent role in the programme. Franz is Agnieszka Holland’s kaleidoscopic and playful biopic depicting the career and personal trajectory of Franz Kafka. Unidentified is Haifaa Al-Mansour’s thriller about a police clerk and true-crime fan who becomes determined to solve the mystery of a murdered schoolgirl. Between Dreams and Hope, directed by Farnoosh Samadi, follows a trans man who needs his father’s permission for gender-confirming surgery as he travels with his partner back to his Iranian home village. Sundays is Alauda Ruiz de Azúa’s sensitive and balanced drama following the emotionally turbulent journey of a teenager and her family after she announces that she is considering becoming a nun.

Shape of Momo – main still (c) Pascale Ramonda

GFF’s support for early-career directors sees a selection of filmmakers making their debut in the programme. Tribeny Rai brings Shape of Momo about a woman returning from Delhi to her family home in the mountains, where she must contend with intergenerational tensions and the cultural pressures from the wider community. Lucía Aleñar Iglesias brings Forastera, where a teenager struggling with grief over her grandmother steps into her grandmother’s clothes and vacant role. And Laurent Slama brings A Second Life, which follows a concierge at breaking point who meets a free-spirited and warm-hearted traveller who might change her life.

Directors showcasing their second features include Richard Hawkins’s Think of England, an intelligent wartime satire about six people sent to a remote location with orders to make pornographic films to raise troop morale, with an ensemble cast that includes Natalie Quarry, John McCrea and Ronni Ancona. Damiano Michieletto’s Primavera is a sumptuous period drama set in 18th-century Venice, where a young virtuoso violinist finds her life changing dramatically after the orphanage where she lives hires Vivaldi as an instructor.

GFF26 will also include four animated features, including Allah is Not Obliged, which follows the turbulent life of a 10-year-old orphan coerced into becoming a child soldier. Death Does Not Existfeatures Félix Dufour-Laperrière’s distinctive dreamlike hand-drawn animation, depicting a young activist grappling with guilt in the tragic wake of a failed armed attack.

This year’s programme features two unrelated films, both by the name of Hen. The gorgeously shot, black-and-white slow-burn South African thriller Hen, which sees a devout husband and his wife start to lose their grip on reality after they take in a strange young boy, and innovative Greek drama Hen, shot from the perspective of a chicken desperate to raise a family, which sees a human tragedy develop in the background.

Comedy offerings include: The Baltimorons, a warm-hearted comedy about a newly sober improv comedian who embarks on a Christmas Eve odyssey across Baltimore with his older emergency dentist; and Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie, a spin-off from Matt Johnson and Jay McCarrol’s cult comedy web series and TV show about two hapless bandmates trying to book a gig at the legendary Toronto Rivoli.

Meanwhile, The Wizard of the Kremlin, starring Jude Law, Alicia Vikander, and Paul Dano, is Olivier Assayas’s political thriller, adapted from Giuliano da Empoli’s novel of the same name, which follows a young Russian filmmaker manoeuvring through the turbulence and uncertainty of a new era when he unexpectedly becomes an adviser to Vladimir Putin during his ascent in post-Soviet Russia. The Garden of Earthly Delights takes audiences into the seedy underbelly of Manila, as the drama explores post-colonial and capitalist exploitation through the story of a street kid, his sister, and a Dutch tourist whose visit doesn’t go as planned.

Scottish Premieres

Many more stars of the big screen will appear in the 18 Scottish premieres at the festival.

Father Mother Sister Brother – main still – (c) Mubi© Vague Notion 2024_Yorick Le Saux

Father Mother Sister Brother is Jim Jarmusch’s Venice Golden Lion-winning triptych of stories exploring familial relationships. The all-star cast features Adam Driver, Charlotte Rampling, Cate Blanchett, Vicky Krieps and Tom Waits. Stephen Graham and Oscar nominee Andrea Riseborough star in The Good Boy, which sees an out-of-control teenager who monetises videos of his criminal deeds online, kidnapped by a stranger who intends to force him into being a ‘good boy’ within a twisted family dynamic.

GFF favourite George MacKay returns with starring roles in two Scottish premieres. Mark Jenkin’s Rose of Nevada sees a mysterious ship reappearing after vanishing for 30 years. Two men (MacKay and Callum Turner) join its crew and net a large catch, discovering on their return that they have sailed through time. Broken English, featuring MacKay and Tilda Swinton, is a formally playful swansong documentary, following Marianne Faithfull as she looks back over her long career, sifting out fact from folklore, and featuring the bohemian rock queen’s final musical performance.

Meanwhile, our nationwide screenings will return, bringing the spirit of GFF to audiences beyond its Glasgow home, connecting with film lovers in cities, towns and rural communities across the UK. The 2026 nationwide film is Dead Man’s Wire, which will have its Scottish premiere at the festival. Gus Van Sant’s stylish 1970s-set true-crime thriller is about a disgruntled debtor who kidnaps the adult son of a mortgage company boss, featuring an all-star cast of Al Pacino, Bill Skarsgård, Colman Domingo and Kelly Lynch.

This year’s venue partners include The Prince Charles Cinema in London, Filmhouse Edinburgh, and Watershed Bristol, plus the addition of more rural Scottish cinemas such as Highland Cinema in Fort William and Campbeltown Picture House.

Documentaries

This year’s festival will host the premieres of 15 documentaries, exploring topics from war, geopolitics and social issues, to legendary Hollywood directors and the worlds of rugby and bull riding.

Militantropos is an observational documentary articulating the devastating impact of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on everyday lives forced into transformation by war. With Hasan in Gaza uses rediscovered footage of a road trip through Gaza with a resident guide, Hasan Elboubou. Hasan, whose fate is now unknown, provides the poignant bedrock for this reflection on memory and loss in Gaza in the years since. A Fox Under a Pink Moon, which won best international film at the 2025 International Documentary Festival Amsterdam, is an intimate documentary capturing life for teenage artist Soraya, an Afghan refugee who shot much of the footage herself over five years, as she tries to travel from Iran to reach her mother in Austria.

Megadoc sees British director Mike Figgis (Leaving Las Vegas) going behind the scenes as Francis Ford Coppola directs his passion project, Megalopolis, offering an eye-opening and entertaining insight into the Apocalypse Now filmmaker’s unconventional working process, and featuring a star-studded line-up of famous faces, including Adam Driver, Jon Voight and Aubrey Plaza. Lomu explores the tragically short life and extraordinary career of Rugby Union All Blacks legend Jonah Lomu. Jaripeo transports us into the world of the hypermasculine jaripeo, a traditional Mexican-style rodeo, including bull and horse riding. Audiences are guided into another world full of queer desire and longing.

GFF26 Audience Award

Glasgow Film Festival’s longest-running award returns this year and will be given to an exceptional first or second-time director. As always, the award is chosen by the most important people: the GFF audience.

The 10-strong shortlist of films from across the world, which will all have UK premieres at the festival, includes eight first-time directors, six of whom are women.

Live a Little, also featured in the Country Focus strand ‘Take a Chance on Me: Swedish Cinema’, follows a young backpacker’s exploration of her boundaries when she wakes up in a man’s bed with no memory of what happened the night before. Hailey Gates’ first feature, Atropia, which won the U.S. Grand Jury Prize at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, is an absurdist satire starring Alia Shawkat as an aspiring actress who works on a military base simulation of Iraq, and Callum Turner as the war veteran who could derail her career.

Bouchra is an animated docufiction hybrid consideration of immigrant life and queer identity that follows a coyote Moroccan filmmaker in New York as she navigates creative endeavours and her relationship with her mother in Casablanca. First Light is a beautifully shot and absorbing drama centring on a nun in a remote part of the Philippines who experiences a crisis of faith after an encounter with a dying young man spurs her to question her beliefs.

The Last One for the Road is a wryly funny road trip to nowhere with a couple of 50-something drinking buddies as they roam the Italian backwaters perpetually in search of that final drink. Nino is a powerful and uplifting drama following a young man embarking on an odyssey across Paris after receiving a devastating diagnosis.

On a String_, written, directed, and starring American stand-up comedian and violist Isabel Hagen, is a laugh-out-loud indie comedy, reminiscent of Frances Ha, which sees Hagen as a Juilliard-trained viola player navigating comic encounters and love mishaps as she prepares for an important audition. Rebuilding is a hopeful and humanistic drama starring Josh O’Connor and Amy Madigan, about a Coloradan cowboy who is trying to reconnect with his nine-year-old daughter while coming to terms with the loss of his home in a wildfire.

A Place for Her sees a host of recognisable French stars in an uplifting and heart-warming social drama, inspired by the real La Maison des Femmes de Saint-Denis in Paris, focusing on the everyday challenges and triumphs of the staff and attendees at a women’s healthcare and support centre. Finally, Pasa Faho is a warm-hearted drama celebrating family and heritage. Unfolding in a Melbourne suburb’s Igbo community, it charts a struggling shoe shop owner’s attempts to reconnect with his 12-year-old son, who has just moved to live with him.

Special Events

GFF25: Muriel’s Wedding30th anniversary screening of Muriel’s Wedding with a special introduction by star of the film Toni Collette.Photo by Ingrid Mur

GFF’s special event screenings return, turning some of Glasgow’s most eye-catching venues into unique one-off pop-up cinemas. Last year, Toni Colette surprised GFF audiences by dancing to ABBA at the Muriel’s Wedding special event at Cottiers – who knows what surprises are lined up for GFF26? These are always a festival hot ticket!

The Pyramid at Anderston will host a special 50th anniversary screening of the epitome of horror films, Carrie (1976), starring Sissy Spacek and John Travolta. The interactive spooky walk-through event will include surprises, the chance to have your prom photo taken and more interactive activities. Dressing up is encouraged, and there will be the opportunity to be crowned queen of the prom.

Expect glitz, glamour and feathers galore in this sultry special 25th anniversary screening of Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge! (2001). Come and be part of the extravagance in Glasgow University Union’s opulent Dining Hall space (Moulin Rouge! attire encouraged, whether that’s diamonds or tailcoats).

The film follows Satine and Christian (played by Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor) as their tragic love story unfurls beneath the glittering lights of bohemian Paris. In the style of the real Moulin Rouge, some unforgettable performances will kick off the night, so don’t be late!

Marilyn Monroe 100

GFF26 will celebrate the life and work of Marilyn Monroe 100 years after her birth, screening a selection of her films, with tickets priced at only £7. These will include The Asphalt Jungle (1950), her first movie to garner widespread attention; iconic crime comedy Some Like It Hot (1959); the hit musical comedy Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953); psychological thriller Don’t Bother to Knock (1952); and British romantic comedy The Prince and the Showgirl (1957), screening on 35mm.

FrightFest

It’s full scream ahead as FrightFest returns for its 21st year at GFF with three days of terror and tantalising thrills, boasting eight new feature films and eight short films spanning nine countries across four continents.

The nation’s self-styled “Woodstock of gore”, running from 5-7 March at GFT, will showcase five world premieres, three European & international premieres, eight UK premieres, and three Scottish premieres.

Opening with the world premiere of Jailbroken, the programme also includes the world premiere of Bury the Devil, a fast-paced, twist-filled exorcism thriller that throws audiences straight into the action. This is followed by the world premiere of Howard J. Ford’s creature feature Bone Keeper, a monstrous tale of survival set deep within a remote cave system, with the director and cast introducing the film.

The UK premiere of documentary Boorman and the Devil, directed by David Kittredge, will explore the troubled legacy of Exorcist II: The Heretic through interviews with John Boorman, Linda Blair,Louise Fletcher and others. Meanwhile, the UK premiere of Glenn McQuaid’s camp sci-fi horror comedy The Restoration at Grayson Manor will see classic monster mayhem meet gothic comedy.Kenichi Ugana’s UK premiere of The Curse is a shocking satire updating The Ring for the TikTok age.

Other Highlights

Other highlights include the international premiere of Connor Marsden’s visceral shocker Violence, a ferocious punk-infused love story wrapped in action-horror intensity, and the FrightFest Short Film Showcase, highlighting eight exciting new directors from the UK and Ireland.

The thrills will continue with the international premiere of Japanese horror The Convenience Store, directed by Jirô Nagae and adapted from the cult game Chilla’s Art, starring Kotona Minami as a worker facing terrifying events during the midnight shift.

The final evening opens with the world premiere of Red Riding, Craig Conway’s gritty contemporary reimagining of Little Red Riding Hood, introduced by Conway, executive producer Neil Marshall and cast members. This is followed by the UK premiere of Karmadonna, Aleksander Radivojević’s dark, dystopian fable about faith, corruption and brutal moral choices.

FrightFest concludes with the world premiere of Australian fantasy horror Deathkeeper, directed by Tristan Barr, a haunting and mysterious adaptation of Vasilios Bouzas’ novella series that delivers an unsettling and unforgettable finale.

Retrospective – ‘Truth to Power’

As part of GFF’s commitment to Cinema For All, audiences can start each day of the festival with a free screening of a classic film as part of the retrospective programme. The theme for 2026 is ‘Truth to Power’, featuring 10 films from the 1930s to 2014 that stand as statements of resistance or feature characters who resist systems of power.

Classics include The Battle of Algiers (1966), on the 1950s Algerian war for independence; Stanley Kubrick’s satire on nuclear war planning, Dr Strangelove (1964); the 50th anniversary of All the President’s Men (1976), on the journalists who broke the Watergate story; and Good Night, and Good Luck (2005), screening on 35mm, directed by and starring George Clooney, which portrays the conflict between a veteran journalist and a U.S. Senator’s anticommunist actions.

Three biographical dramas also feature on the programme. Ava DuVernay’s Oscar-nominated Selma (2014) follows civil rights activist Dr Martin Luther King Jr’s 1965 marches for equal voting rights.Steven Soderbergh’s Erin Brockovich (2000) stars an Oscar-winning performance by Julia Roberts as a paralegal fighting for justice in a small town devastated by industrial pollution. In the Name of the Father (1993) stars Daniel Day-Lewis as an Irishman wrongfully convicted of terrorism who fights to clear his name.

Country Focus – ‘Take a Chance on Me: Swedish Cinema’

GFF26 will spotlight films from Sweden in the Country Focus strand, ‘Take a Chance on Me: Swedish Cinema’. Selected films include five UK premieres. Tarik Saleh’s political satire Eagles of the Republic follows an adored Egyptian actor who takes the lead in a government propaganda film. Documentary Being Bo Widerberg chronicles the life of the writer and film critic and the personal costs of his artistic vision. Satirical sci-fi Egghead Republic follows a budding journalist who is sent into Kazakhstan’s desert to investigate rumours that irradiated centaurs are on the loose within a restricted military base. Turning to horror, strange events unfold after the protagonist takes his mother into a care facility for dementia in The Home.

Community and Youth Takeovers

This year introduces GFF’s first film club, which is ticketed on a sliding scale, with a series of three feminist discussion events inspired by Carrie, Moulin Rouge!, and Born in Flames (which will all be screened at the festival). These sessions will be facilitated by Dr Hannah Granberry, an academic in Film Studies who specialises in nostalgia, horror and cultural studies. With relevant archive material from Glasgow Women’s Library available during the sessions, audiences are invited to engage with the film festival in a discursive format, encouraging wider reading and questions around the films.

Glasgow Film Festival Community Takeover Day will be a free, fun-filled cinema event, created with and for communities around Glasgow. Residents will be invited to attend a Community Planning Meet-Up to select the film, food and activities for the wider community to enjoy.

The Glasgow Film Young Ambassadors will also host the Glasgow Film Festival Youth Takeover, a free pop-up cinema event with activities and food for under-25s, all selected by the Young Ambassadors.

Paul Gallagher, Head of Programme at Glasgow Film Festival, said: “It is an absolute honour and privilege to unveil my first Glasgow Film Festival programme for this 22nd edition of the festival. Across these 126 features are stories of vastly differing characters, settings and ideas, but one thing connects them: they are all the result of a personal vision, uniquely brought to the screen.

“I’m particularly pleased at the depth and variety of films in this programme that were made here in Scotland or by Scottish talent; it speaks so highly of the great filmmakers we have, and the increasing opportunities they are taking and creating for themselves. I can’t wait to showcase theirs and so many other brilliant filmmakers’ work to the greatest cinema audience in the world!”

Isabel Davis, Executive Director of Screen Scotland, said: “The Scottish films reflect a year of fearless, ingenious and entertaining work, from first-time filmmakers to those making a second, third or fourth film here in Scotland. These films sit alongside world-class cinema in a programme that remains as welcoming and audience-focused as ever.

“Screen Scotland is GFF’s major funding partner because the festival champions strong, locally originated work alongside its international programme, and is becoming a significant date in the industry calendar. All of which contributes to our creative and economic growth.”

Ben Luxford, Director of UK-wide Audiences at the BFI, said: “We’re so pleased to be supporting the Glasgow Film Festival with BFI National Lottery funding. We wish Paul Gallagher all the best in his first year as Head of Programme, and we’re excited to see that the team has once again delivered a thrilling and packed line-up which will screen at an even wider range of venues across the city. See you in Glasgow!”

Bailie Annette Christie, Chair of Glasgow Life, said: “Glasgow Film Festival is a much-loved part of our city’s cultural life, bringing people together through a shared love of film. From the powerful opening film, Everybody to Kenmure Street, this 12-day programme delivers first-class cinema throughout.

“The festival offers a wonderful mix of modern and retrospective screenings across a wide range of genres, while placing Scottish filmmaking centre stage. Glasgow Life is proud to support a festival that champions new voices, attracts global talent, and firmly places Glasgow on the international film map.”

Tickets will be on sale online from glasgowfilm.org and at GFT Box Office (12 Rose Street, Glasgow – 0141 332 6535).

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