Glasgow Film Festival to celebrate Hollywood’s Rebel Heroes in 2018

Glasgow Film Festival have released the first crumbs of programme news for the upcoming fourteenth edition, which returns to venues across the city from 21 February to 4 March.

Hollywood's Rebel Heroes

One of the most-loved elements of Glasgow's programme each year is its retrospective. Last year, GFF celebrated cinema’s Dangerous Dames, and this year it’s the boys turn as they pay tribute to Hollywood’s broodiest Rebel Heroes. As has become tradition, most days of the festival will kick off with a free morning screening of a classic, with lovingly put-together and always informative introductions to each picture. “A celebration of mavericks, misfits and ice-cool dudes, the 2018 retrospective ranges widely,” says GFF co-director Allan Hunter, “from Henry Fonda’s people’s champion in The Grapes Of Wrath to Paul Newman’s defiant convict in Cool Hand Luke.”

Film fans rolling up to Glasgow Film Theatre for these early screenings can also expect the on-screen angst of James Deen in Rebel Without A Cause, the brazen cool of Jean-Paul Belmondo in Breathless, the explosive intensity of a young Al Pacino in Dog Day Afternoon, and other legendary screen rebels including Steve McQueen, Sidney Poitier and Elvis Presley. The full lists of films can be found below.

Irish film showcase

GFF will also be showcasing the filmmaking that takes place across the Irish Sea with this year’s country focus, titled Ireland: The Near Shore. “We’re thrilled that GFF will be bringing the hottest filmmaking talent from our neighbours in Ireland to audiences in Glasgow,” says GFF’s co-director Allison Gardner. “It’s particularly rewarding to be able to showcase work from new female directors with fresh takes on the universal story of growing up and making your mark on the world”.

From the titles announced so far, highlights look to be The Breadwinner, the latest film from The Secret of Kells’ co-director Nora Twomey, which follows a headstrong young girl living in Afghanistan under the Taliban, and coming-of-age tale Kissing Candice, the feature debut of music video director Aoife McArdle. Alternatively, you can see Ellen Page (Juno) take on the living dead in The Cured, an intriguing-looking horror-thriller set after the zombie apocalypse.

Emerging filmmakers from the Baltics

From slightly further afield there’s the Pure Baltic strand, which will give Scottish audiences the opportunity to explore the emerging talent from this fascinating corner of Europe. We're told to look out for Jaak Kilmi's The Dissidents, an upbeat comedy about three teenage Estonian boys who escape to Sweden in the 1980s; Sergei Loznitsa’s A Gentle Creature, a captivating look at Russia’s atrophied society, which received big buzz at this year’s Cannes; and Aik Karapetian’s Latvian psychological thriller Firstborn.

The full programme for Glasgow Film Festival 2018 is announced on 24 Jan; for more info, head to glasgowfilm.org/glasgow-film-festival

Full Rebel Heroes line-up
Angels With Dirty Faces, Michael Curtiz (1938)
Breathless, Jean-Luc Godard (1960)
Bullitt, Peter Yates (1968)
Cool Hand Luke, Stuart Rosenberg (1967)
The Defiant Ones, Stanley Kramer (1958)
Dog Day Afternoon, Sidney Lumet (1975)
The Grapes of Wrath, John Ford (1940)
Jailhouse Rock, Richard Thorpe (1957)
On The Waterfront, Elia Kazan (1954)
Rebel Without A Cause, Nicholas Ray (1955)