Young Team: Glasgow Youth Film Festival 2025 preview
GFT's young film programming team have come up with an electric lineup of films for this year's Glasgow Youth Film Festival
Every summer, the GFT mentors a group of 15 to 18-year-old Glasgow students in the ways of film curation and festival coordination. And then, at the end of the summer, those young programmers are let loose and come up with the Glasgow Youth Film Festival. This year's programme is one of their richest and most daring yet.
The festival kicks off with Plainclothes, a 90s-set queer police thriller that sounds like a less problematic Cruising. Other highlights include a pair of new documentaries: Strange Journey: The Story of Rocky Horror, about Richard O’Brien’s creation of The Rocky Horror Picture Show; and Runa Simi, in which a Peruvian father and son work to dub The Lion King into Quechua in an effort to preserve their endangered indigenous language.
The teen programmers also take over GFT’s regular Queer Cinema Sundays slot to screen Jamie Babbit’s cult lesbian rom-com But I’m a Cheerleader, and close the festival with the joyous Irish musical Sing Street. It's a lineup that's fierce, fun and a little subversive. Turns out the kids are alright.
Glasgow Youth Film Festival, GFT, 26-28 Sep; full programme at glasgowfilm.org