Ten of the Best at Glasgow Film Festival 2014

It’s time for the customary lucky-dip selection of the most promising-looking titles at this year's Glasgow Film Festival. The picks below, however, aren’t complete stabs in the dark: Tom at the Farm and Ida are two of the very best films I caught at festivals last year (the former premiered at Venice film festival and the latter took top prize at London film festival) and Ninotchka and Touki Bouki are two of my all time favourites, while the other six features are from directors who’ve done great work in the past.

As well as the ten below, I'd also urge you to make it along to as many of the films from lesser-known names in the GFF programme as you can, which are sure to yield some of the fine filmmakers of the future. Another must-attend is Glasgow's Surprise Film, which is always an electric film-watching experience, no matter the quality of the movie on offer.

Dark Blood (George Sluizer; 24 Feb) 

Sluizer started shooting desert-bound horror Dark Blood in 1993, but it remained incomplete after its 23-year-old star River Phoenix died from an overdose 11 days before the end of the shoot. Two decades on, Sluizer has pieced together a final edit and will present its UK premiere at GFF.

The Double (Richard Ayoade; 22&23 Feb)

Comic actor Ayoade showed a flair for direction in his spritely cineliterate debut Submarine. This followup, an adaptation of a Fyodor Dostoyevsky novella starring Jesse Eisenberg, will be worth attending if only for Ayoade’s always hilarious post-film Q&A.

Exhibition (Joanna Hogg; 25&26 Feb)

With her first two films, Hogg proved herself a master of understated toe-curling comedies about sex, family and class. Expect another awkward comedy of manners from this brilliantly original director.

Ida (Pawel Pawlikowski; 25&26 Feb)

This delightful odd-couple road movie, about a young nun and her foul-mouthed, loose-moraled, Jewish aunt taking a trip to their home town is a glorious return to form for the My Summer of Love director.

Mood Indigo (Michel Gondry; 23&24 Feb)

We’re taking a punt with this one: its trailer suggests a full-on assault of rom-com whimsy, but with Gondry behind the camera we can assume any kookiness will be balanced by inventiveness and effervescence.

Ninotchka (Ernst Lubitsch; 25 Feb)

Talking of rom-coms, they don’t get any better than this sparkling fairytale from 1939 starring Greta Garbo as a sombre Soviet emissary whose icy exterior reluctantly melts in gay Paris. 

The Past (Asghar Farhadi; 1&2 Mar)

Two years ago Iranian filmmaker Farhadi made an international splash with A Separation. With the rerelease of his earlier films (About Elly, Fireworks Wednesday) it seems he’s been knocking out deeply humane melodrama for years, making his latest family drama, starring Berenice Bejo and Tahar Rahim, a must-see. 

Starred Up (David Mackenzie; 21&22 Feb)

Mackenzie is reportedly back to his Hallam Foe form with this intense prison drama that hinges on an electric performance from Skins star Jack O’Connell as a teenage offender ‘starred up’ to adult prison.

Tom at the Farm (Xavier Dolan; 26&27 Feb)

The ridiculously talented Québécois writer-director-actor tones down the florid indulgences of his first three films for this tense and darkly funny chamber piece that calls to mind Polanski at his most twisted.

A Thousand Suns/Touki Bouki double-bill (Mati Diop/Djibril Diop Mambéty; 2 Mar)

The screening of Diop’s tribute to her uncle Mambéty’s masterpiece Touki Bouki would be recommendation enough – that it’s paired in a double-bill with his film, which following the misadventures of two young lovers in Senegal, makes it unmissable.