FIRST, the figures: no fewer than 330 events showcasing more than 180 movies from 51 countries, including six world, seven European, 77 UK and 52 Scottish premieres in this, its 14th year.
All of which makes Glasgow Film Festival one of the largest celebrations of its kind in yon UK.
The sheer range of genres, cultures and styles is extraordinary, and the hackneyed expression “something for everyone” is truly applicable here.
Where to start?
Well, let’s be radical and check out the beginning – on Wednesday – with the UK premiere of Wes Anderson’s animated canine adventure, Isle of Dogs.
It’s set in a future dystopian Japan and features the voices of Bryan Cranston, Scarlett Johansson, Edward Norton, Tilda Swinton, Jeff Goldblum and Bill Murray.
Fast forward and we find that the end of the festival, on March 4, has the world premiere of Nae Pasaran, a film to make Scots proud, featuring the selfless solidarity of workers at the Rolls Royce factory in East Kilbride who, in 1974, refused to repair engines that had been used during the military coup in Chile the previous year, thereby grounding half of the dictatorship’s air force.
Hard to imagine something like that happening now.
All the same, Felipe Bustos Sierra’s feature film shines a laudatory light on times when ordinary men defied the might of the market and a military junta.
The film festival also features extraordinary people, superstars of the screen, so to say, though we still think of the likes of Karen Gillan, David Tennant and James McAvoy as “oor ain”, the boys and girl next door who made it big.
Gillan will daunder or perchance sashay doon the red carpet for the world premiere on Saturday of her directorial debut The Party’s Just Beginning, which was filmed in her native Inverness.
Meanwhile, Tennant, a fellow Doctor Who graduate, stars in a new rom-com with a twist – You, Me and Him – and McAvoy, the professor in yon X-Men, can be seen in Wim Wenders’ thrilling romance Submergence.
I’m so parochial that I’ve barely left time to mention Hollywood legend Bill Pullman, appearing for the UK premiere of The Ballad of Lefty Brown, while on screen you can also catch Liam Neeson (in Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House), Harvey Keitel (in Madame) and Joaquin Phoenix (in You Were Never Really Here, by Glasgow’s own Lynne Ramsay).
I also wanted to highlight the pop-up movie houses and GFF FF (FrightFest).
Too many events to figure here, I’m afraid.
The website glasgowfilm.org/festival has full details of the festival, which runs from Wednesday until March 4 at various venues.
Tickets are also available on 0141 332 6535.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here