GFF 2013: CineSkinny Awards

Cine team’s films of the festival
Jamie Dunn – Après mai (Olivier Assayas): It’s Dazed and Confused meets Ted.
Josh Slater-Willaims – Neighbouring Sounds (Kleber Mendonça Filho): It’s Short Cuts meets Ted.
Nathanael Smith – Wadjda (Haifaa al-Mansour): It’s Pee-wee's Big Adventure meets Ted.
Marianne Wilson – The Legend of Kaspar Hauser (Davide Manuli): It’s The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser meets Ted.

Honourable mentions
Beyond the Hills (Cristian Mungiu), The We and the I (Michel Gondry), From Up on Poppy Hill (Goro Miyazaki), Caesar Must Die (Paolo Taviani, Vittorio Taviani), Wolf Children (Mamoru Hosoda), Spring Breakers (Harmony Korine).

Doc of the Fest
Village at the End of the World (Sarah Gavron): A study of isolation that feels like a more humane version of a Werner Herzog doc, this finds real warmth in the coldest of locations. Recommended for everyone except PETA activists.
Runners-up: Indie-Game: The Movie, Vito.

The moment of the festival
Alex Salmond emerging as witty and charming as he introduced John Carpenter’s Ghosts of Mars at GFF’s Geek Movie Night. What we learned: he prefers DC Comics to The Dandy (how unpatriotic is that?); he knows Natasha Henstridge's CV better than he knows the second verse of Flower of Scotland; no saltires on his Christmas tree, but there's a Seven of Nine doll; he has very bad taste in movies.

The WTF moment of the festival
James Franco, dressed as a gold-toothed gangsta rapper, sitting by a swimming pool playing a white baby grand piano and crooning a Britney Spears ballad to three blond air-heads who happen to be wearing pink, unicorn embroidered balaclavas and brandishing semi-automatic submachine guns in Spring Breakers.
Runners-up: Nicole Kidman having a wizz over Zac Efron’s face in The Paperboy; every second of The Legend of Kaspar Hauser.

The Marmite film of the festival
Stoker (Park Chan-wook): The Skinny’s negative review attracted a lot of commenters claiming that ‘we didn’t get it’, but we weren’t the only ones who reacted coldly to this Hitchcockian, gothic-tinged thriller. Some declared its beauty, others just fell asleep.

The director of the future award
Rob Savage, who made his debut feature, Strings, at the ridiculously young age of eighteen, although one suspects the film’s singular, woozy style might have more to do with the fact he was sniffing glue behind the bike sheds during production.

Soundtrack of the festival
Après mai (Olivier Assayas): This pin sharp coming-of-age film features tunes by Nick Drake, Soft Machine, Captain Beefheart, Tangerine Dreams and Syd Barrett. The standout musical cue comes in the form of Kevin Ayers’ Decadence. The song gained added poignance at GFF’s 18 Feb screening as the former Soft Machine frontman had passed away that day.

The screening we’re gutted we missed
Secret Subway: CAAAAANNNN YOOOOOOU DIG IT?? Sadly, we didn’t dig it as this sold out straight away. How cool would it have been to see Walter Hill’s cult masterpiece The Warriors in a deserted St Enoch subway station, though?
Runner-up: The Passion of Joan of Arc at Glasgow Cathedral.