Full programme announced for Glasgow Film Festival 2024

The 20th edition of Scotland’s largest film festival will run from 28 February to 10 March at Glasgow Film Theatre (itself celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2024) plus venues across the city.

Glasgow Film Festival (GFF) 2024 will open with the UK premiere of Rose Glass’s new thriller Love Lies Bleeding starring Kristen Stewart, and close with the world premiere of Janey, following Scottish stand-up legend Janey Godley as she embarks on her final live tour following her cancer diagnosis.

Across 12 packed days, the programme boasts 11 world and international premieres, 69 UK premieres and 15 Scottish premieres, from 44 countries.

World and international premieres include Tummy Monster, a hallucinogenic dark drama by Glasgow director Ciaran Lyons, starring rising Scottish star Lorn Macdonald; the big screen adaptation of blackly comic novel Bucky F*cking Dent, written by, directed by and starring David Duchovny, and a new restoration of Billy Connolly: Big Banana Feet, the rarely seen documentary shot during his 1975 tour of Ireland.

UK premieres include real-life father and daughter duo Ewan and Clara McGregor taking a road trip in Bleeding Love, Cynthia Erivo as a Liberian refugee who befriends Alia Shawkat’s American tour guide in Drift, and Viggo Mortensen directing and starring in Western epic The Dead Don’t Hurt.

Scottish audiences will get the first chance to see Kevin Macdonald’s take on the rise and fall of a fashion icon in High and Low: John Galliano, Lea Seydoux and George MacKay in The Beast and Luna Carmoon’s hotly tipped debut Hoard.

The UK premiere of the fantastical romance La Chimera starring Josh O’Connor will take place at both GFF and nine partner cinemas across the UK.

Opening and Closing Gala Premieres 

GFF24 will open on 28 February with the UK premiere of British director Rose Glass’s hotly anticipated follow-up to Saint Maud, Love Lies Bleeding. The stylish romantic thriller stars Kristen Stewart as Lou, a reclusive gym owner who falls hard for Jackie (Katy M. O’Brian), an ambitious bodybuilder who’s heading to Las Vegas to pursue her dream. Their love soon leads to violence as they get pulled deep into the web of Lou’s criminal family.

The festival will close on 10 March with the world premiere of Janey, an honest, moving and often hilarious documentary about Glasgow comedian Janey Godley, interweaving stories from her life with footage from her Not Dead Yet tour in the wake of her terminal cancer diagnosis. Janey found fame for her sweary anti-Trump placards, became a social media sensation as she revoiced First Minister Nicola Sturgeon’s Covid briefings, was called out for controversial historic tweets and was trying to rebuild her career when she received her diagnosis. Featuring appearances from familiar faces including Nicola Sturgeon and Jimmy Carr, director John Archer’s feature captures Janey Godley at her most vulnerable and most gallus. Following its world premiere at Glasgow Film Festival, Janey will be released in UK cinemas from 15 March.

World and European Premieres 

Glasgow audiences will be the very first to see 11 world and international premieres on the big screen.

A Scottish comedy icon makes a welcome return to the big screen with a brand-new restoration of the little-seen 1976 documentary Billy Connolly: Big Banana Feet. Lovingly restored by the BFI in collaboration with the film’s director Murray Grigor from the only two 16mm prints known to exist, this comedy charmer follows Billy on his legendary 1975 tour of Ireland.

Glasgow director Ciaran Lyons makes his feature debut with Tummy Monster, a hallucinogenic Scottish black comedy about a self-centred tattoo artist (rising Scottish star Lorn Macdonald from GFF19 closing film Beats) who gets embroiled in a bizarre psychological battle with an international popstar.

Other highlights include David Duchovny adapting and starring in the big screen adaptation of his comic novel Bucky F*ing Dent, about a baseball-mad dad whose terminal cancer diagnosis leads him to be reunited with his estranged son; Edge of Summer, the feature debut from Grierson Award-winning British director Lucy Cohen, about a mother-and-daughter holiday to Cornwall that takes a dark turn after a discovery in a tin mine changes everything; GFF favourite, Canadian actor-writer Jonas Chernick with The Burning Season, a love story told in reverse; and the chance to get an exclusive first look at the entire second season of the award-winning Helensburgh-shot queer BBC Scotland drama Float, written by acclaimed playwright Stef Smith and starring Hannah Jarett Scott and Jessica Hardwick, before it hits TV screens later this year.

UK Premieres 

69 feature films will get their first ever UK cinema showing at this year’s GFF as the programme boasts a wealth of comedies, dramas, and real-life stories from 37 countries across the world.

Ewan McGregor stars alongside his real-life daughter Clara McGregor in Bleeding Love, a road movie following a young woman embarking on a road trip to New Mexico with her estranged father; there’s a double-dose of McGregor senior as he stars alongside Ellen Burstyn and Rhys Ifans in the mind-bendingly surreal comedy Mother, Couch; Cynthia Erivo stars as a Liberian refugee who flees to a Greek island and befriends an American tour guide (Alia Shawkat) in Drift, co-starring Honor Swinton Byrne; Peter Sarsgaard and Billy Magnussen stage a Coup!, a raucous satire about a rebellious servant leading a revolt against his wealthy employer during the 1918 Spanish Flu; and Bob Byington’s sardonic deadpan comedy Lousy Carter stars David Krumholtz as a failed animator struggling to finish his animated short when he finds out he has six months to live.

International features include The Teachers’ Lounge, Germany’s 2024 Oscars Best International Film shortlisted drama about an idealistic young teacher who decides to get involved when one of her students is suspected of theft; Hounds, a tightly-wound Moroccan thriller following a father and son, who are struggling to get by on minor jobs for the local mob, over a single night as a kidnapping goes awry; a grieving father and daughter move from England to Jerusalem to make a fresh start in Palestinian director Muayad Alayan’s moving supernatural drama, A House in Jerusalem, about trauma and the ghosts of our past; the multi-talented Samyuktha Vijayan writing, directing and starring in Blue Sunshine, a finely tuned character study of a transgender woman undergoing her transition in the face of conservative Indian society; Green Border, Agnieszka Holland’s Venice Special Jury Prize Award-winner about the plight of refugees who are shunted back and forth across the no man’s land between Poland and Belarus; Disco Boy, a gripping French drama about an undocumented immigrant who signs up to the French Foreign Legion and becomes increasingly psychologically troubled, starring Franz Rogowski (Passages); and Cold, a chilling Icelandic murder mystery unfolding across two time periods as a man and his daughter try to come to terms with a suicide while he investigates historic deaths at a juvenile centre. From the chic and startling French 16mm vampire spinetingler The Vordalak to the Stranger Things meets The Goonies charm of Riddle of Fire, a neo-fairytale about three Wyoming kids embarking on an epic errand, GFF brings a world of new cinema to Glasgow.

Fresh UK talent also shines with nail-biting police thriller Jericho Ridge, the directorial debut from Will Gilbey starring Nikki Amuka-Bird (Knock at the Cabin) as a small-town sheriff under siege and The Old Man and The Land, Nicholas Parish’s moving and inventive debut following an elderly man working alone to maintain his ancestral farmland, as his heard but never seen children (played by Rory Kinnear and Emily Beecham) prove to be both remote and controlling.

Urgent true stories getting their UK premiere at the festival include Caroline Suh and Cara Mones’ Sorry/Not Sorry, following the sexual misconduct allegations made against Louis C.K. and the effects his comeback has on those who came forward.

Behind the camera talent take their moment in the spotlight with Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger, a personal and moving look at two of British cinemas greatest filmmakers, narrated by Martin Scorsese; and Frank Capra: Mr America, the story of how a young immigrant rose through the ranks of early Hollywood to become one of the Great American storytellers. GFF24 is also thrilled to host the UK Premiere of Jack Archer’s Bill Douglas: My Best Friend, a look at the extraordinary lifelong friendship between one of Scotland’s greatest filmmaking talents Bill Douglas and Peter Jewell, the man who became his close friend, confidant and creative muse when they met doing National Service in Egypt in the 1950s, living and working together until Bill’s death from cancer aged 57.

GFF is also delighted to bring its unique festival magic to nine partner cinemas across the UK with the UK premiere of Alice Rohrwacher’s fantastical, genre-defying gravedigging romantic musical La Chimera starring Josh O’Connor which will screen both at the festival and in cinemas including Barbican and BFI Southbank in London, Chapter in Cardiff, Tyneside in Newcastle, Watershed in Bristol, Broadway in Nottingham, Showroom in Sheffield, DCA in Dundee and Eden Court in Inverness.

Scottish Premieres 

Scottish audiences will have the first chance to see directorial debuts from female filmmakers, with the Scottish premieres of Ramata-Toulaye Sy’s Senegalese love story Banel & Adama and UK director Luna Carmoon’s compelling tale of compulsion Hoard.

Other Scottish premieres at the festival include a road trip from a London housing estate to Scotland in Black Dog, the debut from multi-talented writer-producer-actor-director George Jaques; Bertrand Bonello’s sci-fi romance The Beast starring Léa Seydoux (One Fine Morning) and George MacKay (1917); Matteo Garrone’s Io Capitano, a vibrant and powerful drama about the hopefulness, resilience and brutality of a migrant experience that has been shortlisted to represent Italy as it’s International Feature at the Oscars; Sean Devlin’s hybrid narrative-documentary Asog, following Jaya, a non-binary Filipino school teacher and typhoon survivor on a road trip to enter a drag pageant; Radu Jude’s latest satire Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World; and Only the River Flows, a moody Asian-noir crime thriller laced with dark humour from Shujun Wei.

There’s a first hometown showing for Glasgow-born Oscar-winner Kevin Macdonald’s new documentary, High and Low: John Galliano, charting the rise and fall of the legendary fashion designer, plus Opus: Ryuichi Sakamoto, a swansong live performance from the legendary Japanese composer recorded just before his death in 2023. I Dream in Photos follows Pulitzer Prize-winning Northern Irish photojournalist Cathal McNaughton as he is banned from re-entering India and left stranded in his rural Irish hometown, separated from his family, friends and camera.

Audience Award, Sponsored by MUBI 

The only award handed out at Glasgow Film Festival is given to an outstanding feature film by a first or second time director and is chosen by the most important people – our audience. Sponsored by MUBI, the eight-strong shortlist for the GFF24 Audience Award features Milk Teeth, an atmospheric survivalist drama with a fairy-tale edge that sees trouble brewing for a young woman and her mother after they take in a foundling youngster against the wishes of their community;  Falling into Place, a meet-cute romance set between London and a wintry Isle of Skye written, directed by and starring Aylin Tezel alongside Chris Fulton (Bridgerton); Hesitation Wound, a taut character study from Selman Nacar whose protagonist, embroiled in a murder trial defending a mentally fragile client faces tough choices that extend well beyond the courtroom; Smari Gunn and Logi Sigursveinsson’s uplifting sporting underdog documentary The Home Game, the true story of how a plucky village football side became determined to play a home game in Iceland’s FA Cup; Lorena Padilla’s Martinez, an irresistibly droll Spanish comedy that sees a curmudgeonly elderly office worker determined to live out his neighbour’s bucket list after she dies;  The Teacher, a powerful drama from British-Palestinian filmmaker Farah Nabulsi about Palestinian school teacher struggling to reconcile his risky commitment to political resistance with the chance of a new relationship with volunteer-worker Lisa (Imogen Poots, 28 Weeks Later); Woken, Alan Friel’s psychological sci-fi thriller set in the near-future starring Maxine Peake (Dance First) and Erin Kellyman (Solo: A Star Wars Story) as a pregnant woman who wakes up on an island with no recollection of anyone she’s living with, forced to question everything she knows as new arrivals trigger violence in a fight for both her life and that of her unborn baby and The Dead Don’t Hurt, an epic new Western directed by and starring Viggo Mortensen alongside Vicky Krieps and Danny Huston.

FrightFest 

We are delighted to welcome back FrightFest for its 19th year at GFF, as they take over GFT’s Cinema 1 from 7th to 9th January. The legendary three-day horror binge showcases 11 new feature films from eight countries, spanning three continents and embracing two world premieres, eight UK premieres and one Scottish premiere. World premieres include Mom, a striking, provocative and consuming psychological horror starring Schitt’s Creek Emily Hampshire; and Custom, a paranoid horror thriller from award-winning, Brazilian-born and UK-based filmmaker Tiago Teixeira.

FrightFest kicks off with UK Premiere You’ll Never Find Me, a claustrophobic two-hander set in an Australian RV Park starring Brendan Rock as a lonely man and Jordan Cowan as a mysterious woman who knocks at his door late one night and wraps up with the UK premiere of hard-hitting diner-invasion thriller Last Straw, marking Alan Scott Neal’s directorial debut.

Other highlights include All You Need is Death, with Irish writer-director Paul Duane drawing from the earlier works of Ben Wheatley and Peter Strickland and delves into ethno-musicology in this unique, unsettling cautionary folk horror; Kill Your Lover, an uncompromising and wild body horror from debut co-directors Alix Austin and Keir Siewert; The Deep Dark, from Mahieu Turi (Hostile), following a veteran miner and a professor who find themselves underground and up against an ancient mutant that craves blood; Mike Hermosa’s riotous monster comedy The Invisible Raptor featuring an invisible genetically-engineered prehistoric raptor on the loose; and the safety of a community left in the hands of a palaeontologist and security guard. Wake Up, a fresh take on the slasher genre where classic adrenaline-fueled horror and Gen Z environmental issues collide in one twisted night from hell, comes courtesy of RKSS (the directorial collective behind Turbo Kid and Summer of ’84); and Federico Zampaglione’s (Shadow, Tulpa: Demon of Desire) The Well, is an extreme supernatural chiller starring Lauren LaVera, fresh from her eye-catching lead in the Terrifier 2. Alongside the main programme, FrightFest will present World premieres of two shorts from up-and-coming Scottish filmmakers: Mouse, a pin-sharp stalker thriller from Ewan J Fletcher, and Subject 73 a twisty morality tale from Reiff Gaskell.

2024 Country Focus: Czech, Please! 

Each year the festival shines a light on global cinema, exploring contemporary and re-discovered film and this year the festival’s Country Focus shines on Czechia (also known as Czech Republic). Czech, please! includes Daisies, a radical feminist film from Věra Chytilová once banned for its stance on communism and patriarchy. Is There Any Place For Me, Please? is a debut feature documentary and UK premiere from Jarmila Štuková which showcases an intimate portrayal of one woman navigating life after an acid attack. Other premieres include dystopian sci-fi Restore Point and chilling crime thriller Mr. and Mrs. Stodola. Timely period drama We Have Never Been Modern will inspect gender politics, martial constraints and self-identity. Brothers, Czechia’s official submission to the 2024 Academy Awards for the Best International Film, examines liberation and resilience in a story focused on an anti-Communist resistance group.

Retrospectives 

Glasgow Film will celebrate three major anniversaries this year – 85 years since the opening of Scotland’s first-ever purpose-built arthouse cinema, ‘Cosmo’, on Rose Street in Glasgow in 1939; 50 years since that cinema became Glasgow Film Theatre in 1974; and the 20th edition of Glasgow Film Festival which was launched in 2005.

GFF is delighted that its hugely popular free morning retrospective will return for 2024 with Our Story So Far, a journey through time with 10 classic titles from each anniversary in Glasgow Film’s history. These widely popular morning screenings are free to attend and give audiences the rare opportunity to catch a season of undisputed classics on the big screen. From 1939, enjoy GFT favourite James Stewart in Frank Capra’s irresistible ode to political idealism Mr Smith Goes to Washington; screen icon Greta Garbo getting the rare chance to flex her comedy chops in rom-com Ninotchka; Cary Grant leading a team of daredevil pilots risking their lives to deliver the mail in mountainous South America in Only Angels Have Wings; and Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon wandering the moors in Wuthering Heights. From 1974 there’s the second instalment of Francis Ford Coppola’s seminal gangster epic The Godfather Part II; Gene Wilder and a scene-stealing Marty Feldman in Mel Brooks’ endlessly quotable comedy classic Young Frankenstein; and the sensational Pam Grier as a vigilante out for justice in Foxy Brown. Finally, it’s the return to the big screen of some recent classics from 2005 with Rian ‘Knives Out’ Johnson’s directorial debut Brick, an endlessly-inventive high school neo-noir; Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon as Johnny and June Carter Cash in Walk the Line; and Viggo Mortensen as a seemingly mild-mannered family man forced into extreme acts in David Cronenberg’s A History of Violence, showing on 35mm.  The morning retrospectives are free and un-ticketed, so audiences are invited along to GFT at 10.30am each day of the festival. To continue the great tradition of former GFF co-director Allan Hunter’s legendary introductions to the morning retrospectives, rich in history and insight, GFF has commissioned ten young up-and-coming writers to write an introduction to each of the films, contextualising them in new ways. These intros will be published in a booklet given out free at the festival, with an intro written by Allan.

GFF24 also marks the return of the festival’s beloved special event screenings. Movie fans can click their ruby red slippers together three times to be transported to a magical screening of Victor Fleming’s 1939 technicolour masterpiece The Wizard of Oz at Cottiers Theatre in Glasgow’s West End. For a very different camp classic, there’s a grotesquely glamorous tribute screening to schlock auteur John Waters’ 1974 magnum opus Female Trouble, complete with a live drag show, at Barras Art and Design.

Other classics returning to the big screen include the UK premiers of new 4K restorations of Glasgow-born Lynne Ramsay’s incendiary debut Ratcatcher and Martin Scorsese’s screwball caper After Hours, plus Danny Boyle’s Glasgow-shot Shallow Grave, and Quentin Tarantino’s game-changing sophomore feature Pulp Fiction in 35mm.

GFF teams up with Scotland’s activist archive Invisible Women to celebrate the 50-year career of pioneering actor Dolores del Río, who became both a defining performer of the Mexican Golden Age and one of the first Latin American stars to crossover into Hollywood with Wild Flower, Flaming Star: The Films of Dolores Del Rio. GFF audiences can witness her electrifying star power on the big screen with special screenings of La Otra, the sordid tale of a woman who kills her twin sister to assume her identity; Mexican romance Maria Candelaria with del Rio as a peasant woman who poses for the same artist who doomed her mother with a nude portrait; Texas western Flaming Star co-starring Elvis Presley; pre-Code RKO musical Flying Down To Rio, which also features the first on-screen pairing of Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire.

What Will The Men Wear? explores the star power of three of Hollywood’s most subversive female stars of the 1930s: Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich and Katharine Hepburn. Notorious for sporting ‘men’s’ clothing on and off film sets and challenging gender norms, all three women have their place in Hollywood’s queer canon. Screenings of Morocco, Queen Christina and The Philadelphia Story showcase these stars at their most daring and chic.

Love is sweet oh! is a specially curated programme examining on-screen representations of love in the lives of Black people and people of colour and how, for these communities, this experience should be celebrated in the public space of the cinema. In Bend It Like Beckham, Love Jones and Happy Together, love is an act of resistance, a space to be seen and heard like never before.

Gestures of Memory: After the Archive is a series of screenings which interrogate and re-imagine archival practice including The Cemetery of Cinema, filmmaker Thierno Souleymane Diallo’s journey to understand the production behind Mouramani (1953), the first film made in Guinea and French-speaking Africa and locate a copy of its print, and R21 AKA Restoring Solidarity, Mohanad Yaqubi’s experimental documentary about resistance across geographies, inspired by his receipt of a mysterious package containing twenty lost 16mm films collected by Japanese activists who were part of the country’s solidarity movement with Palestine.

This year’s festival will introduce GFF After Hours, a curated programme of events for festival goers and delegates to relax, chat about films and enjoy the festival out with the theatre. The full After Hours programme will be announced next month.

Allison Gardner, CEO of Glasgow Film and Director of GFF, said: “I am extremely proud to have been here for every one of Glasgow Film Festival’s 20 editions. My thanks goes to everyone who has helped us to get this far. Many, many people have worked incredibly hard to make this the friendliest film festival in the world.

One of my highlights of GFF is our Audience Award, this year sponsored by MUBI. The Audience Award supports emerging talent and it’s a joy to see these films play in front of our dedicated audiences. Watch all 8 of our hand-picked films and support these directors at the early stages of their directing careers.

Over the years, at Glasgow Film Festival, we have supported Scottish films and talent. Something that we are very proud to have done and this year is no exception. We also champion Scottish films from our past and this year we have some fantastic anniversaries to honour. Shallow Grave is 30 years old and Glaswegian Lynne Ramsay’s debut feature Ratcatcher screening from a new 4K print is 25 years old. Our motto is ‘Cinema For All’ and we strive to bring the best films from around the world to Glasgow. My advice to everyone is to choose films you know nothing about and take a chance, you might discover a hidden gem (and the programme is positively bursting with them!) that will stay with you forever. Here’s to the next 20 years.”

Isabel Davis, Executive Director of Screen Scotland said: “Screen Scotland is thrilled to support this very special anniversary edition of the Glasgow Film Festival. This year’s outstanding programme richly demonstrates GFF’s dedication to the best in cinema from Scotland and around the world. Congratulations, Allison and all at GFF on two decades of bringing great cinema to audiences across Glasgow. It’s a pleasure to support you in all that you do.”

Ben Luxford, Director of UK Audiences at the BFI, said: “The Glasgow Film Festival is delivering another fantastic programme in venues across Glasgow, plus elements which reach far beyond the city’s borders. It promises to be another great Festival and we hope as many audiences as possible will be able to enjoy it thanks to National Lottery funding”

Glasgow Life Chair, Bailie Annette Christie, said: “Glasgow Film Festival is one of the most popular annual highlights of our city’s cultural events programme. It is always greatly anticipated by audiences from near and far, as well as industry professionals, and is internationally renowned as a carefully curated showcase of the best of world cinema. This 20th edition of the festival offers an extensive, exciting programme featuring an incredible and diverse range of contemporary and retrospective film across all genres, special screenings, and other events. I’ve no doubt we can look forward to another hugely successful festival that will reinforce Glasgow’s standing as a great destination for cinema, and a city in which our passion for film is matched by our talent and expertise in the film, TV and creative industries.”

Tickets to Opening and Closing Galas go on sale at 11am on Thursday 25 January; tickets to all events go on sale to GFT Cinecard holders at 11am on Friday 26 January and on general sale at 11am on Monday 29 January here and from the GFT Box Office.