Glasgow Film Festival reveal 2022 programme

Oh how we’ve missed Glasgow Film Festival. Last year the event was all set to be a hybrid affair, with plenty of socially distant in-person screenings, but was shunted online at the 11th hour thanks to that extremely long “two-week circuit-breaker” that was introduced to slow the spread of COVID-19 at the end of 2020.

While that stymied edition still had a strong and eclectic programme, we deeply missed the lively atmosphere of the Glasgow Film Theatre during festival mode and we’re aching to get back after today’s announcement of the 2022 programme. The GFF team clearly feel similarly. “I think we have all missed that sense of community and discovery you experience at a festival,” says co-director Allan Hunter.

The Outfit and Murina

The 18th edition of GFF will kick off with the UK premiere of crime thriller The Outfit. It’s the directorial debut of Graham Moore – who already has an Oscar under his belt for his debut screenplay, The Imitation Game – and stars Mark Rylance as an expert tailor who’s in over his head with a group of mobsters. The festival closer, meanwhile, is Croatian coming-of-age drama Murina, which comes with Martin Scorsese's seal of approval.

As ever, the programme features a tantalising selection of much-anticipated films from around the world. The latest from Claire Denis (Fire), Paul Verhoeven (Benedetta), Joachim Trier (The Worst Person In The World), Sean Baker (Red Rocket), Mia Hansen-Løve (Bergman Island), Terence Davies (Benediction), Francois Ozon (Everything Went Fine), Kirill Sokolov (No Looking Back) and Gaspar Noe (Vortex) are just some of the established auteurs with work screening at Glasgow in March.

A regular at GFF is Edinburgh-based Spanish filmmaker Icíar Bollaín, back again with Maixabel, a real-life drama about a strong-minded widow meeting the Basque terrorists who murdered her husband. We’re also looking forward to the Scottish premiere of Justin Kurzel’s Nitram, which sees the Australian director once again digging into his country’s grisly recent history with a film centred on the young man who committed the Port Arthur massacre. And gala status has been given to the UK premiere of Audrey Diwan’s timely and urgent abortion drama Happening, which won the top prize at last year’s Venice Film Festival. On a lighter note, there’s the UK Premiere of A-ha: The Movie, a new doc celebrating the Norwegian synth-pop sensations.

Scottish filmmakers at Glasgow Film Festival

There’s plenty of local talent involved too, particularly in the non-fiction game. Alan Cumming stars in doc My Old School, which tells the incredible true story of a 30-something Scot who managed to enrol at Bearsden Academy, convincing the teachers and pupils that he was a boy genius from Canada. Much praised on the festival circuit has been Ride the Wave, a warm doc following 14-year-old Scottish surfing champion Ben Larg as he prepares to surf the world’s biggest waves. And of GFF’s world premieres, we’re particularly looking forward to The Hermit of Trig, Lizzie McKenzie’s long-in-the-making portrait of an elderly hermit called Ken who has been living in self-imposed isolation in the Highlands of Scotland for four decades.

We’re also looking forward to A Banquet, the feature debut from Ruth Paxton, who’s long been a star of Scotland’s short film scene. The abundance of talent involved in Skint!, a series of monologue films commissioned by BBC Arts with poverty as the connecting tissue, makes it a must-attend. Peter Mullan and Derry Girls' writer Lisa McGee are the creative directors behind the project, while Cora Bissett, Jenni Fagan and James Price are among those contributing the vignettes.

Expect some of the guests heading to Glasgow for the festival to be announced in the coming weeks, but GFF have confirmed that local boy-done-good Armando Iannucci will be in town for a special live ‘In Conversation’ event looking back over his amazing career in radio, television and movies.

“I can’t begin to describe our joy at being able to have our loyal, committed and fun audiences back to the festival,” says GFF co-director Allison Gardner. “We have all undergone different and difficult times over the last two years and nothing helps us to heal and connect like film. Having audiences in both our festival venues and our partner cinemas across the UK is a source of joy.”

We’ve suggested some highlights here, and for the full programme, head to glasgowfilm.org/glasgow-film-festival

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Tickets for The Outfit, Murina and Happening go on sale at 10am on Mon 31 Jan; FrightFest passes go on sale at 10am on Tue 1 Feb; all other screenings in the full GFF22 programme go on sale at 10am on Wed 2 Feb