Glasgow Film Festival reveals its lineup for 2023
Glasgow’s annual celebration of cinema will be back for its 19th edition with 123 features including the new film from We Are Lady Parts creator Nida Manzoor and debuts features from exciting Glasgow talents like Adura Onashile and James Price
After a few turbulent years where it was either forced online or much reduced in capacity, Glasgow Film Festival returns to close to full strength this spring, with 250 screenings and events planned across the city from 1 to 12 March.
As already announced, the festival will open with Girl, the debut feature from talented Glasgow writer-director Adura Onashile, which is fresh from impressing audiences at Sundance. This opening gala is already sold out, but an extra screening has been added on Thursday 2 March due to demand. The festival will close with another film currently causing a stir at Sundance: Polite Society. The feature debut from Nida Manzoor, the creator of the terrific We Are Lady Parts, it concerns two sisters from a British Pakistani family who are torn apart by an impending marriage. We’re told this is a wild mix of high school comedy, Bollywood movie and gravity-bending martial arts flick, and it sounds like a riotous way for GFF to close this year's proceedings.
Scottish talent at Glasgow Film Festival
Girl isn’t the only homegrown movie on the slate. The Skinny favourite James Price will show the feature version of his new BBC series Dog Days, which GFF describe as “a big-hearted look at a musically gifted homeless Dundee man trying to turn his life around.” Conor McCarron, who was electric in Peter Mullan’s Neds, stars – tickets for this world premiere screening are Pay What You Can. Another debut we’re looking forward to is Andrew Cumming’s stone-age set horror The Origin, in which a band of early humans come up against a deadly force in the pre-historic Highlands. And the Scottish horror theme continues in FrightFest highlight Consecration, which stars Jena Malone as a young woman investigating the mysterious death of her priest brother at a convent on the Isle of Skye.
The Origin
A regular at GFF is Edinburgh-based filmmaker Mark Cousins, and he’s bringing a brace of documentaries to Glasgow. First is The March on Rome, his searing archive film looking at the roots of fascism in Europe. GFF also screen My Name is Alfred Hitchcock, his playful study of the Master of Suspense which sees the legendary director (voiced by Alistair McGowan) rewatch his classics. As is often the case with Cousins's films, even if you think you know all there is to know, the director has found fresh angles through which to explore these familiar subjects.
Other Scottish docs to look out for are Cassius X: Becoming Ali, based on Stuart Cosgrove's book tracing the great boxer’s early life from confident teenager to heavyweight champion, and I Am Weekender, Chloé Raunet’s exploration of Wiz’s controversial and banned 1992 film about the UK acid house scene, featuring a host of talking heads including Bobby Gillespie and Irvine Welsh.
More GFF 2023 Highlights
Another familiar face to GFF audiences is Carol Morley. She’s back at the festival again with road movie Typist Artist Pirate King, which tells the amazing undiscovered story of outsider artist Audrey Amiss, who takes to the road with her psychiatric nurse in an attempt to reconnect with key figures from her life. Paul Mescal is rightly being celebrated for his extraordinary turn in Aftersun (as I write, he's only been bloody Oscar-nominated for Best Actor), but he’s in even darker mode in God’s Creatures, a chilling drama set in an isolated Irish fishing village. The brilliant Emily Watson plays Mescal’s character’s conflicted mother, who’s torn between protecting her beloved son and her own sense of right and wrong.
Maybe Nicolas Cage is more your vibe. The go-for-broke actor is back as a gruff buffalo hunter who takes a Harvard dropout under his wing in western Butcher’s Crossing. We’re also intrigued by Blackberry, which tells the spectacular rise and fall of that once ubiquitous smartphone. The film will come fresh from the Berlinale and stars Jay Baruchel and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’s Glenn Howerton.
Blackberry
If you’re looking for something a bit sexier than a bunch of tech bros, there’s twisty psychosexual thriller Sanctuary, which stars Christopher Abbott (long one of the most interesting young American actors currently working), as the heir to a hotel empire, and Margaret Qualley, who plays the dominatrix who has primed him for success. Sanctuary is one of GFF co-director Allison Gardner’s picks, and she also gave a plug to Daniel Goldhaber’s How to Blow Up a Pipeline, a ticking-clock thriller concerned with a group of young environmental activists on a daring mission to sabotage an oil pipeline.
A couple of romcoms catch our eye too. There’s The End of Sex, about a couple with children who try to kickstart their sex lives by trying to have a threesome; Emily Hampshire, best known as Stevie from Schitt’s Creek, stars. At the other end of the relationship spectrum is Raine Allen Miller’s Rye Lane, which sees two 20-something Londoners embark on an impulsive day of mayhem in the city.
GFF Special Events and Retrospectives
More good news is that GFF will be bringing back their famous special screenings. To tie in with the 60th anniversary of Hitchcock’s The Birds (and Mark Cousins' Hitchcock documentary) there’ll be a showing of this classic thriller in some yet-to-be-disclosed avian-inspired setting. GFF is also marking the 30th anniversary of Michael Myers’ cult classic So I Married an Axe Murderer – those with massive heids might want to sit at the back for this one. And Jonathan Glazer’s otherworldly masterpiece Under the Skin is screening with a live performance of Mica Levi’s BAFTA-nominated score performed by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. After the first show sold out, a second performance will go on sale.
As ever, GFF have some brilliant retrospectives up their sleeves. The incredibly popular morning screenings are back with In the Driving Seat, a season of films featuring women taking charge of their lives, setting off into the unknown, seeking adventure, freedom and self-discovery. Think Thelma & Louise, It Happened One Night, Vagabond and Spielberg’s rarely screened gem The Sugarland Express. Each screening is free and comes with an entertaining and informative introduction from GFF co-director Allan Hunter; given this is Hunter’s last year as co-director, there’s even more reason to catch these brilliant intros.
There are two more unmissable retrospectives. Looking for America: The Films of Lee Grant will feature the Oscar-winning actor and director’s documentaries from the 80s exploring many of the social issues of the Regan era (homelessness, gender bias in the workplace, domestic abuse, the rights of gender non-conforming people) and that are unfortunately still relevant three decades later. And there’s a delectable mini-retrospective of Gloria Grahame films (titled Just Drawn That Way), featuring many of her greatest femme fatale roles such as in films like The Big Heat, In a Lonely Place and The Bad and The Beautiful.
Plenty of great films also feature in GFF’s strand celebrating the contemporary cinema of Spain. Titled Viva el cine español!, you can catch much-anticipated films like Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s muscular psychological thriller The Beasts, tryptic On The Fringe starring Spanish A-listers Penélope Cruz and Luis Tosar, and justice-driven drama Prison 77.
That’s just a fraction of what’s on offer, so dig in and book a lot of time off in early March, you’re gonna need it.
Glasgow Film Festival 2023 runs 1-12 March; Closing Gala tickets on sale at noon on Wed 25 Jan. Tickets for the full GFF23 programme on sale from 12 noon on Mon 30 Jan