Taking place over 12 days from 26th February to 8th March. Glasgow Film Festival has once again become a place for amazing premieres. This year featuring 9 World premieres, 10 European premieres, 102 UK premieres and 39 Scottish premieres. Run by Glasgow Film, the charity that also runs Glasgow Film Theatre (GFT). The Film Festival is made possible by support from Screen Scotland, the BFI (award funds from the National Lottery), Glasgow Life and EventScotland, part of VisitScotland’s Events Directorate.
And with the full festival programme now released, alongside stars attending from George Mackay, Caitlin Moran, Simon Bird, Emily Beecham, and Celia Imrie to Bill Paterson, Haifaa Al-Mansour and Craig Roberts. GFF continues to go from strength to strength. While equally placing Glasgow at the centre of domestic and international film.
The years festival will open and close with UK premieres of films directed by women – Alice Winocour’s Proxima starring Eva Green as an astronaut preparing for a mission to the International Space Station and Beanie Feldstein’s star turn in the big screen adaptation of Caitlin Moran’s blockbusting memoir How to Build a Girl, directed by Coky Giedroyc. Glasgow Film Festival closes on International Women’s Day with a celebratory showcase of female talent – with every film screened either directed or written by a woman or starring a female lead.
World Premieres
Scotland-based director Anthony Baxter (You’ve Been Trumped) makes his long-awaited return with Flint. Following the denial, evasion, betrayal and hypocrisy after the city’s domestic water supply switched to the Flint River. While, Robbie Fraser’s Pictures From Afghanistan takes us on a journey through the people and places of modern Afghanistan. Meanwhile Mark Stanley stars as inspiring real-life mountaineer and charity campaigner David Tait facing up to long-buried childhood trauma in Julian Jarrold’s moving biopic Sulphur & White. And Notting Hill meets Great British Bake Off in Eliza Schroeder’s irresistible rom-com Love, Sarah starring Shelley Conn, Bill Paterson, Celia Imrie and Rupert Penry-Jones.
European Premieres
Hugo Weaving stars as a world-weary Melbourne crime boss in the sharp contemporary re-telling of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure. While Over the Sea offers a beguiling coming-of-age story, following boisterous and carefree youngster. Meanwhile This World Won’t Break, offers a country music drama shot in the dive bars and spit-and-sawdust venues of Dallas. And documentary Because We Are Girls shines a light on a conservative Indo-Canadian family in small-town British Columbia.
UK Premieres
With UK over 100 feature films receiving their UK premiere, GFF is once again the place to be to catch some hotly anticipated film releases. This year highlights include Mark Cousin’s epic homage to the history of female talent behind the camera. Women Make Film narrated by Tilda Swinton and Jane Fonda in five instalments. Plus Kelly Macdonald in the sweeping Australian outback romance Dirt Music; Daniel Radcliffe as a South African activist attempting a daring jailbreak in the nail-biting true story Escape From Pretoria; and a darkly comic ride in to the American heartland with Ewen Bremner as Edward, a visionary attempting to open a German sausage shop in Gutterbee,
Meanwhile George Mackay (1917) and Russell Crowe star in The True History of the Kelly Gang. While Rosamund Pike stars as Marie Curie in Radioactive. And The Garden Left Behind follows the story of Tina, an undocumented Mexican trans woman fighting to make a life in New York.
Scottish Premieres
39 features will make their Scottish cinema debuts at this year’s GFF. Including inbetweener star Simon Bird’s directorial debut Days of the Bagnold Summer. And Craig Roberts Eternal Beauty, starring Sally Hawkins as a schizophrenic woman encountering surprising new sources of love and life. While Scottish director Peter Mackie Burns follows up his acclaimed first feature Daphne with our LFF top rated Rialto. Plus GFF plays host to the deeply unsettling and stunning Saint Maud, one of our best films of 2019 at LFF.
Full details of this years GFF programme including tickets can be found here
