Glasgow Film Festival 2020: Our Programme Highlights

The Glasgow Film Festival has gone from strength to strength since bursting onto the film scene in 2005. The 2020 edition of the festival opens with Alice Winocour’s Eva Green starring sci-fi Proxima, and closes with the cinematic adaptation of Caitlin Moran’s How to Build a Girl from director Coky Giedroyc. Sandwiched in-between these films are a plethora of must see releases, just some of which we’ve outlined below.

The Glasgow Film Festival runs from February 26th to March 8th. Tickets are available from their website. Check out the full programme here.

Anderson Falls
Dir: Julien Seri
Sat 7th March 11.00 – GFT

The ever underrated Shawn Ashmore leads Anderson Falls, starring as a detective fixated on finding the father and son serial killers that murdered his wife. This one falls under GFF’s annual Frightfest banner.

Atlantis
Dir: Valentyn Vasyanovych
Tues 3rd March 18.00, Wed 4th March 13.00 – Cineworld

This post-apocalyptic drama set in Ukraine sees a former soldier battling PTSD befriend a young volunteer who hopes to spread peace to a war torn society.

Blanco en Blanco
Dir: Théo Court
GFT Sat 29 Feb (17.45) & Sun 1 Mar (12.45)

This Venice Film Festival winner tackles imperialism and the male gaze in late nineteenth century South America as a photographer is tasked with documenting the wedding of a powerful landowner.

The Cleansing Hour
Dir: Damien LeVeck
GFT Fri 6 Mar (13.30)

A couple of millennial entrepreneurs live stream a staged exorcism, yet are caught of guard when proceedings take a frighteningly realistic turn.

County Lines
Dir: Henry Blake
GFT Thu 27 Feb (18.30) & Fri 28 Feb (16.00)

County Lines looks like an undeniably impressive debut, delivering what appears to be a hard hitting coming-of-age tale and impressive turns from Conrad Khan and Ashley Madekwe .

Deerskin (Le Daim)
Dir: Quentin Dupieux
CINEWORLD Fri 6 Mar (18.30) & Sat 7 Mar (14.45)

Described by the festival programme as having echoes of Peeping Tom and Dressed to Kill, Deerskin sees Jean Dujardin star as a man launching an all out war on inadequate jackets after picking up an antique deerskin overcoat.

Dirt Music
Dir: Gregor Jordan
GFT Sat 29 Feb (15.15)

Kelly Macdonald and Garrett Hedlund lead this Australian drama that follows an unsatisfied wife of a business tycoon finding the excitement she craves in a handsome poacher. We can feel ourselves swooning already.

Disco
Dir: Jorunn Myklebust Syversen
CINEWORLD Tue 3 Mar (20.45) & Wed 4 Mar (15.45)

This disturbing drama explores evangelical cult churches in its glimpse at Pastor’s daughter Mirjam (Josefine Frida Pettersen), a freestyle dancer, whose recent collapse on stage is blamed on a lack of devotion.

Gay Chorus Deep South
Dir: David Charles Rodrigues
CCA Tue 3 Mar (20.15) & Wed 4 Mar (13.00)

The GFF programme notes that this: “Follow(s) The San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus as they bus their way though a concert tour of the deep south, in response to the resurgence of faith-based anti-LGBTQ laws brought about in the Trump era.” Rodrigues’ film looks set to be a timely, inspiring piece and a pressing reminder that as a community, we still have a lot to do.

In the Quarry (En el pozo)
Dir: Bernardo & Rafael Antonaccio
GFT Fri 6 Mar (15.45)

From Uruguay, this thriller sees four friends gathered for a Summer barbecue at an abandoned quarry – a place that soon becomes the setting for a shocking act of brutality.

Invisible Life (A Vida Invisível de Eurídice Gusmão)
Dir: Karim Aïnouz
GFT Thu 27 Feb (15.10) / CINEWORLD Sat 29 Feb (17.30)

Two sisters born in Rio de Janeiro make their way through life, each mistakenly believing the other is living out her dreams half a world away.

Martin Eden
Dir: Pietro Marcello
GFT Fri 28 Feb (20.30) & Sat 29 Feb (15.00)

Martin Eden struggles to rise above his destitute, proletarian circumstances through an intense and passionate pursuit of self-education, hoping to achieve a place among the literary elite.

Moffie
Dir: Oliver Hermanus
CINEWORLD Mon 2 Mar (20.45) & Tue 3 Mar (13.30)

Hermanus, the filmmaker behind 2011’s Beauty, returns with Moffie which follows a young gay man’s army training under the apartheid regime of South Africa.

The Other Lamb
Dir: Malgorzata Szumowska
CINEWORLD Sat 7 Mar (21.00) & Sun 8 Mar (13.00)

Toxic masculinity and the cult of personality are at the heart of this drama from Szumowska which follows the women at the hands of Michiel Huisman’s charismatic yet abusive cult leader.

Pacarrete
Dir: Allan Deberton
CINEWORLD Thu 27 Feb (15.45) / CCA Sat 29 Feb (17.15)

Marcelia Cartaxo leads Pacarrete which follows an eccentric former dancer in Brazil donning her old tutu for a celebratory performance. This melodrama looks heartwarming and is sure to boast a stellar turn from Cartaxo.

Pity the Lovers
Dir: Maximilian Hult
GFT Mon 2 Mar (18.15) & Tue 3 Mar (13.15)

Longing for love but inept at close relationships; a problem brothers Óskar and Maggi have in common but deal with in different ways.

Resin
Dir: Daniel Joseph Borgman
GFT Wed 4 Mar (21.00) / CINEWORLD Fri 6 Mar (15.30)

The dangerous paranoia lurking beneath the seemingly idyllic existence of a family of hermits living on a remote island begins to come to the fore when their daughter starts to question her parents’ worldviews.

Rialto
Dir: Peter Mackie Brown
GFT Thu 27 Feb (20.30) & Fri 28 Feb (15.45)

Irish drama Rialto sees Colm face a mid-life crisis after the death of his father, drifting from his family and children, he finds compassion in his relationship with young male escort Jay.

Saint Maud
Dir: Rose Glass
GFT Sat 7 Mar (15.45)

Saint Maud’s trailer promises a hugely intense watch which looks set to assert Glass as a filmmaker to watch out for. The casting of the ever fantastic Jennifer Ehle is also another massive draw for us and this looks like a deliciously grizzly two-hander between her and Morfydd Clark.

State Funeral
Dir: Sergei Loznitsa
CINEWORLD Sun 1 Mar (17.15) & Mon 2 Mar (13.15)

The enigma of the personality cult is revealed in the grand spectacle of Joseph Stalin’s funeral.

Suicide Tourist (Selvmordsturisten)
Dir: Jonas Alexander Arnby
GFT Thu 27 Feb (15.45) & Fri 28 Feb (18.00)

The programme notes: “Insurance agent Max (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) is in the midst of an existential crisis. Whilst investigating the claim made by a suspected widow he chances upon the secretive Hotel Aurora, a luxury resort which specialises in suicide.” Coster-Waldau is an ever watchable presence and the macabre narrative sounds like one bulging with suspense, twists, and turns.

Synchronic
Dir: Justin Benson & Aaron Moorhead
GFT Thu 5 Mar (20.30)

Jamie Dornan and Anthony Mackie lead this sci-fi thriller as two paramedics tangled in a mysterious deaths caused by a dangerous new designer drug.

The True History of the Kelly Gang
Dir: Justin Kurzel
GFT Thu 27 Feb (20.15) & Fri 28 Feb (13.00)

An all star cast assemble in the blisteringly visceral trailer for True History of the Kelly Gang from Justin Kurzel (Snowtown, Macbeth). This Australian western sees outlaw Ned Kelly and his gang flee from the authorities in the 1870s.

The Truth (La Vérité)
Dir: Hirokazu Kore-eda
GFT Tue 3 Mar (18.15) & Wed 4 Mar (15.45)

Kore-eda’s first film outside Japana sees a stormy reunion between a daughter and her actress mother, Catherine (Catherine Deneuve), against the backdrop of Catherine’s latest role in a sci-fi picture as a mother who never grows old.