ORGANISERS of this year's Glasgow Film Festival have promised an "exciting, innovative" event packed with UK, European and world premieres.
The festival will open with the first showing of the Ben Stiller and Naomi Watts comedy drama While We're Young in Europe, and will close with the first British screening of the Cannes Jury prize-winning Swedish film Force Majeure.
This year will also see the introduction of a special Audience Award, which will be voted for by cinema-goers.
All film critics will also vote on their favourite movie from across the programme, and a Glasgow Film Festival Critics' Choice list will be published after the festival.
One of this year's major themes is Glasgow's reputation as 'cinema city' after providing the backdrop to films such as World War Z, Cloud Atlas and Under The Skin, starring stars like Brad Pitt, Scarlett Johansson and Halle Berry.
Glasgow Film Festival highlights
Twenty venues including Charles Rennie Mackintosh's only church at Mackintosh Queens Cross, Robert Adam's Trades Hall and the Drygate Brewery will play host to screenings and events during the festival's run from February 18 to March 1.
Major UK premieres this year include director Wim Wenders' Oscar-nominated documentary Salt of the Earth and the film Still Alice, for which Julianne Moore is tipped to win the Best Actress Oscar.
Allan Hunter, Glasgow Film Festival co-hirector, said: "Glasgow's love affair with the movies is a passion that never fades and one that lies at the heart of this year's Glasgow Film Festival, and our Cinema City strand celebrates the love affair in special screenings, talks and an exhibition. "Some amazing pop-up events in stunning locations across Glasgow help put the city centre stage, too.
"It feels only appropriate that our Audience Award asks the best festival audience in the world to give their stamp of approval to a dazzling new talent.
"It is a festival filled with people and places close to home but also one that embraces a diverse, wonderful world of cinema, perfectly illustrated by our opening and closing galas."
Tickets for the main festival programme are on sale from 10am on Monday 26 January, while passes for FrightFest, GFF's horror festival-within-the-festival, go on sale at 10am on Thursday 22 January.
Allison Gardner, Glasgow Film Festival co-director added: "As ever, we've tried first and foremost to create a programme that our audiences will enjoy, and our Special Events strand in particular should be great fun for all."
Cabinet Secretary for Culture, Europe and External Affairs, Fiona Hyslop said: "It's fantastic to watch Glasgow Film Festival continue to grow and continue to create innovative, world-class programmes.
"Thanks to Creative Scotland funding the festival is well placed to continue its success well into the future."
xref Alison Rowat on page 18 please
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 hereComments are closed on this article