AFTER last year’s Glasgow Film Festival had to retreat online due to the pandemic, there’s an added thrill to seeing it return to cinemas this year, with the usual array of premieres and special guests, including Alan Cumming who stars in My Old School, Jack Lowden, who will be seen in the much-anticipated Scottish premiere of Terence Davies’s new film Benediction, and Martin Compston for a 20th anniversary screening of his debut Sweet Sixteen. Armando Iannucci is also coming to Glasgow for “In Conversation” event.
But, really, it’s all about the movies. And here are 21 we have circled in our programme as must-see.
The Outfit
This year’s opening gala film, a twisty thriller starring Mark Rylance, Zoey Deutch, Simon Russell Beale and Johnny Flynn, arrives trailing comparisons to the movies of the Coen Brothers. That’s quite the thing to live up to. But Graham Moore’s debut movie arrives in Glasgow on the wings of good reviews at the Berlin International Film Festival so here’s hoping.
Despite the Englishness of much of the cast, the film is set in 1950s Chicago, with Rylance playing a tailor who turns a blind eye to the gangsters who use his shop as a drop-off point. Or he does until he doesn’t have a choice anymore.
Moore won an Oscar for his script for The Imitation Game, which saw Benedict Cumberbatch play Alan Turing. Here, as well as co-writing the script, Moore turns director in this period piece which riffs on gangster movies. As you’d expect, given the story, the costumes look impeccable.
The Outfit screens at the Glasgow Film Theatre (GFT) on Wednesday, March 2, 7.15pm and Thursday, March 3 at 3pm
Her Way (Une Femme du Monde)
Never mind Camille Cottin, for some of us the real star of Netflix’s French breakout hit Call My Agent! was Laure Calamy, aka Noemie, the assistant who had designs on her boss. She’s front and centre in Cecile Ducrocq’s debut drama Her Way, playing a prostitute, Marie, who is looking to secure her son’s future with a place at a private chef’s school.
The result is a very Gallic stew of sex and swearing (no one internalises anything in this movie, it’s very unBritish), in which Marie has to ask herself how far will she go to make her dream for her son come true?
Calamy draws your eyes in every scene and if this film doesn’t inspire at least one breathless story in Vogue about how chic she looks in her gold raincoat then there’s something wrong with the world.
Her Way, GFT, Saturday, March 5, 8.30pm and Sunday, March 6, 3.30pm. The film is also screening online via Glasgow Film At Home
Ashgrove
This world premiere sees director Jeremy LaLonde and writer Jonas Chernick (who also stars in the movie) return to the Glasgow Film Festival with an all-too timely story about a global pandemic, in this case, one that affects the world’s water supply.
Amanda Brugel, best known for The Handmaid’s Tale, plays the scientist trying to find a cure while at a countryside retreat. But just because you’re attempting to save the world doesn’t mean you don’t have domestic problems too.
Ashgrove, GFT, Thursday, March 3, 8.30pm and Friday, March 4, 3.30pm. The director, writer and cast will take part in a Q&A after the Thursday screening
My Old School
In 1993 Brandon Lee enrolled at Bearsden Academy. He was not just another Scottish teenager, however. He wasn’t a teenager at all. Lee was a medical school dropout aged 30 whose real name was Brian MacKinnon. MacKinnon’s Walter Mitty story has now been turned into a documentary film by Jono McLeod, a former classmate, in which the film maker speaks to MacKinnon’s fellow pupils and Alan Cumming lip-syncs MacKinnon’s own testimony. The result is an innovative sleight of hand that includes animated sequences and a few famous voices all helping to tell an incredible story.
My Old School, GFT, Thursday, March 3, 8.15pm and Friday, March 4, 3pm. There will be a Q&A with the director and stars after the Thursday screening
Red Rocket
Sean Baker’s new movie comes trailing auspicious reviews from Cannes last year. His follow-up to Tangerine and The Florida Project is a lo-fi comedy drama about life on the margins in America. In a case of art imitating life, actor, rapper, comedian and one-time porn performer Simon Rex plays Mikey Saber, an adult movie actor on the skids who returns home to Texas City where he lives down to everyone’s expectations. A study in narcissism. Turns out they’re not all in government.
Red Rocket, GFT, Sunday, March 6, 8.20pm and Monday, March 7, 3pm
Maixabel
Director Iciar Bollain has been a familiar face at the Glasgow Film Festival over the years and she returns in 2022 with Maixabel, a film about political violence and restorative justice in contemporary Spain. Based on real-life events, it begins with the assassination of a Basque politician in 2000 by ETA. A decade later, the politician’s wife Maixabel, played by Blanca Portillo, is invited to meet the men who killed him. It’s an intriguing premise and the resulting film could make for an interesting double bill with Pedro Almodovar’s recent Parallel Mothers.
Maixabel, GFT, Tuesday, March 8, 5.45pm and Wednesday, March 9, 3.30pm. Iciar Bollain will take part in a Q&A session after Tuesday’s screening
One Second
Zhang Yimou’s long, illustrious career has taken in everything from his time as one of the most revered members of China’s fifth generation of film makers, responsible for such classics as Red Sorghum and Raise the Red Lantern, to huge success with such wuxia epics as House of Flying Daggers and Hero. He even directed the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2008 Olympics, a role he repeated for the recent Winter Olympics in Beijing.
His 2020 film One Second receives its UK premiere at the Glasgow Film Festival. Set in a labour camp in the 1970s, it has at its heart a man desperate to see a glimpse of his estranged daughter in a newsreel. The result promises to be a love letter to cinema itself.
One Second, GFT, Saturday, March 5, 6pm and Sunday, March 6, 1pm
Nobody Has to Know
Bouli Lanners both directs and stars in this romance set on Lewis He plays a Belgian farmhand in exile who suffers a stroke. Ready to help is the local estate agent and farmer’s daughter, played by Michelle Fairley of Game of Thrones fame. By all accounts a full-on weepie, which sees Fairley give a performance that’s a match for the glorious Hebridean landscape.
Nobody Has to Know, Cineworld Renfrew Street, Thursday, March 10, 8.30pm and Friday, March 11, 6.15pm
Julia
Directors Julie Cohen and Betsy West, who previously gave us RGB, a documentary about the late Supreme Court judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg, helm this tasty take on the life and times of famous American TV chef Julia Child, author of Mastering the Art of French Cooking. A smorgasbord (I know it’s the wrong culinary tradition but go with me) of talking heads, archive footage and mouth-watering cooking on camera which follows Child’s adventures in life and food.
Julia, Cineworld Renfrew Street, Monday, March 7, 8.45pm and Tuesday, March 8, 3.15pm
Wild Men
“You were attacked by a Viking?” Another Coen Brothers comparison incoming. Thomas Daneskov’s Danish comedy thriller might be nowhere near Minnesota geographically, but in the way it swings between humour and horror it could be living right next door to Frances McDormand in Fargo.
The Viking in this case is Martin (Rasmus Bjerg) who has left his wife (Sofie Grabol of The Killing fame) and family and gone to live in the wilds where his path crosses with a trio of drug smugglers. The result toggles between drollery and tension and throws in a spectacular backdrop to boot.
Wild Men, Cineworld Renfrew Street, Friday, March 11, 8.45pm and Saturday, March 12, 6.10pm
True Things
Sounds interesting. Director Harry Wootliff follows up her Glasgow-set drama Only You with an adaptation of Kay Davies’s novel. A psychological thriller, it sees the always excellent Ruth Wilson fall for bad boy Tom Burke in a rundown English seaside town. Drunk on love, she can’t see what’s wrong with him. The film divided critics at Venice last year but given Wootliff and the cast’s pedigree it seems worth taking a chance on.
True Things, Cineworld Renfrew Street, Saturday, March 5, 8.45pm and Sunday, March 6, 6pm. The film will also be available to watch online via Glasgow Film at Home
Once Upon a Time in Uganda
One of the themes of this year’s festival is a celebration of African film-making. And as part of the African Stories strand, Once Upon a Time in Uganda receives its UK premiere. It tells the story of low-budget action movie film maker Isaac Nabwana and what happens when his films go viral. Bowfinger for real.
Once Upon a Time in Uganda, Cineworld Renfrew Street, Saturday, March 5, 6pm and Sunday, March 6, 8.30pm
The Hermit of Treig
Lizzie MacKenzie’s documentary on Ken Smith who has spent the last 40 years living in a log cabin near Loch Treig is an account of a life lived off grid. MacKenzie has known Smith since 2012 and this film is an intimate vision of a man living off the land and what that entails, both physically and emotionally.
The Hermit of Treig, GFT, Saturday, March 5, 3.30pm and Sunday, March 6, 3.45pm. The film will also be available online via Glasgow Film at Home. There will be a Q&A with Lizzie MacKenzie after the Saturday screening
Skint
With Scottish talent (Peter Mullan) on the screen and behind the camera (writers Jenni Fagan and Cora Bissett are both among the directors), GFF hosts the world premiere of this series of dramatic monologues commissioned by BBC Arts. As the title suggests, they all deal with issues of poverty and homelessness and the human stories behind the buzzwords. The Peter Mullan segment could be of particular interest. It’s been shot by upcoming Glasgow director James Price, who The Skinny has already labelled the “Springburn Scorsese”.
Skint, GFT, Thursday, March 10, 5.30pm
Where is Anne Frank
On paper, Ari Folman’s animated film sounds a curious beast. It follows a young girl called Kitty trying to find Anne Frank in near-future Amsterdam, a quest cross-cut with animated recreations from Frank’s wartime diary (which, you may remember, was addressed to an imaginary friend called Kitty).
It’s quite the conceit but given the power and ambition of Folman’s previous animated film, Waltz with Bashir, perhaps we are in safe hands with this unconventional approach to one of the great heroines of Holocaust literature. This is the UK premiere.
Where is Anne Frank, Cineworld Renfrew Street, Glasgow, Sunday, March 6, 3.30pm and Monday, March 7 at 3.15pm
Benedetta
Arch provocateur Paul Verhoeven (Basic Instinct, Robocop) returns with his unsurprisingly controversial new movie which conflates sex and spirituality in the 17th-century. The story of a nun (the titular Benedetta, played by Virginie Efira) who is not only having intense visions of Jesus but also conducting a lesbian affair with a new arrival at the convent (played by Daphne Patakia). This, as you might imagine, does not go down well when it is discovered.
With Charlotte Rampling and Lambert Wilson among the supporting cast, Verhoeven’s latest is as sumptuously mounted as ever. The question remains, is this anything more than a relatively high-budget example of a nunspolitation movie? Here’s a chance to find out.
Benedetta, GFT, Monday, March 7, 8.30pm and Tuesday, March 8, 3pm
Hold Your Fire
It’s 1973. Four young African-Americans bustle their way into a sporting goods store in Brooklyn to steal some guns. Their plans are thwarted when the shop is surrounded by the NYPD and so the four men are trapped in a store full of guns. Trapped with them are 11 hostages.
A bloodbath seems to be looming as the hours pass. But when police commissioner Patrick Murphy decides to negotiate with the men (much to the disgust of some of his police officers) the situation (and the film) takes a twist. Enter Harvey Schlossberg, a traffic cop turned NYPD psychologist.
Schlossberg is just one of the talking heads in Stefan Forbes’s smart, fast-moving documentary that comes on like a Sidney Lumet movie. Forbes sketches out the situation and then spends the rest of the film complicating the picture, taking in police culture, the Nation of Islam and the long-term effects of PTSD. It’s film that grows as it goes, and the ending is pretty gripping.
Hold Your Fire, GFT, March 11, 8.30pm and March 12, 1.30pm and online via Glasgow Film At Home
Fire (Both Sides of the Blade)
The French heavyweight contender at this year’s film festival? Quite possibly. Arthouse favourite Claire Denis (Beau Travail, High Life) continues her association with the grand dame of French cinema, Juliette Binoche in this drama receiving its UK premiere in Glasgow. Binoche plays a radio journalist perfectly happy in her relationship with Vincent Landon until an old flame (played by Gregoire Colin) reappears in her life. How Denis’s naturally cool, formalist style will tackle the melodramatic heat of a love triangle is the fascination here. The film also sees Denis continue her long musical association with those masters of sadcore, The Tindersticks.
Cineworld, Renfrew Street, Glasgow, Monday, March 7, 8.30pm and Tuesday, March 8, 6pm
a-ha The Movie
In time every 1980s pop band will have a film made about them. This is not a bad thing. And certainly a-ha, the Scandinavian pop trio who scored big with Take on Me, are worthy of their time on the big screen. And not just for Morten Harket’s cheekbones, though, let’s face it, they were quite something.
Maybe they still are. No doubt Thomas Robsahm and Aslaug Holm’s film will show us. With new band interviews and using archive footage, the film sets out to chart the rise and rise of the Norwegian band and the toll it took on them.
a-ha The Movie, GFT, Friday, March 4, 5.40pm and Saturday March 5, 1pm. Director Thomas Robsahm will take part in a Q&A after the Friday screening
Mandrake
Set in a Northern Ireland of haunted woods and abandoned and decaying buildings, this thriller that by the end has morphed into full folk horror, is a bleak, black, tale full of kidnapped children, rumours of supernatural creatures and a woman who has been released from prison after murdering her husband.
Jude Hill, the child star of Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast, gets the best spooky moments, but Deirdre Mullins as the probation officer, who takes the case of “Bloody” Mary Laidlaw (Derbhle Crotty, above), is the suffering heart of this slow-burn film. And, boy, does she suffer. Part of the festival’s FrightFest strand, there will also be a Q&A with the film’s director, Lynne Davison.
Mandrake, GFT, Saturday, March 12, 10.45pm
Murina
This year’s closing gala, Antoneta Alamat Kusijanovic’s sun-dappled slice of Croatian noir Murina receives its UK premiere in Glasgow. The story of a surly teenager (played by Gracija Filipovic) and her relationship with her controlling father (Leon Lucev), it’s a coming-of-age story that promises a sea-salted visual dazzle combined with a troubled family saga straight out of Patricia Highsmith. Critics at Cannes last summer loved it.
Murina, GFT, March 13, 7pm
For more information, visit glasgowfilm.org
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