Glasgow Film Festival 2024: Industry Focus and After Dark events

You’ve had a couple of weeks to pore over the Glasgow Film Festival cinema lineup, but today they announce more treats: the Industry Focus and the tantalising new late-night strand After Hours. 

Chats with Kevin Macdonald, Adura Onashile and Charlotte Regan

Much of the Industry Focus is for industry delegates only, but the public can also get in on one of its headline events: a career retrospective and homecoming for Glasgow filmmaker Kevin Macdonald. The Oscar-winner has one of the most eclectic CVs in British filmmaking, ranging from groundbreaking documentaries like Touching the Void and One Day in September to dramas like Last King of Scotland and State of Play via hugely enjoyable genre work like The Eagle and Black Sea. A discussion through his entire career, right up to GFF selection High & Low: John Galliano, should prove fascinating.

Elsewhere in the GFF Industry Focus, which runs from 3 to 7 March, you’ll find a range of topics geared towards all levels and sectors of the film industry. We love the look of NextGen, which celebrates a new wave in British filmmaking by bringing together filmmakers Lucy Cohen (Edge of Summer), Adura Onashile (Girl) and Charlotte Regan (Scrapper) for a conversation with Mia Bays, the Head of Filmmaking Fund at the BFI, and Eva Yates, a long-time champion of British debut filmmakers at BBC Film who commissioned Cohen, Onashile and Regan’s debuts. 

Pitching and Showcases

New initiative Book to Screen also caught our eye. It’s a live pitching event where publishing houses from across Scotland will pitch their books to producers. There’s more pitching to be done in Animatic Live Pitch. GFF’s new talent development scheme will culminate in a live pitch to a panel that includes animation executives from Netflix and Aardman, with the panel awarding the best pitch £5000 in development funding; it’s basically Dragon’s Den but cartoons.

There’s also a Comedy Showcase in collaboration with BBC Scotland, which sees standups like Niamh McKeown and Ashley Storrie discuss broadcast routes for comedy talent in Scotland. The event is followed by sketches, stand-up and comedy clips from Susie McCabe, Jim Smith, and Noising Up, hosted by Paul Black.

There are many more events, sessions and networking events on offer. See GFF's website for the full rundown and to get your industry pass.

GFF After Hours: Karaoke, club nights and a 2005 disco

We’re also looking forward to late-night shenanigans at GFF’s newest event strand, After Hours. Who, for example, could resist the opportunity to attend the GFF Movie Karaoke, where festival goers perform songs from their favourite films? (Sign me up for Waiting for a Star to Fall from the closing credits of Three Men and a Little Lady, please!) 

Elsewhere, GFF borrows an idea from Edinburgh Film Festival (but let’s face it, EIFF have pinched plenty of ideas from GFF in the past) with the inaugural GFF Ceilidh hosted by Bass Rock Ceilidh Band, a Glasgow-based electric four-piece Ceilidh band. There’s also a GFF Club Night hosted by Radio Buena Vida for International Women's Day on 8 March. There’ll be more dancing at GFF's ‘Unofficial’ Closing Party on 9 March. Taking inspiration from what we were playing on our chunky iPods back in GFF's launch year of 2005, Radio Buena Vida’s Suzy Lee Kidd will be serving up indie sleaze and cheesy pop for this 2005 Disco.

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GFF After Hours is free to all festival delegates with their festival pass. Full details of each individual event, and how audiences can book tickets can be found at glasgowfilm.org/gff-after-hours