GFF 2012: Visionary Flicks

Glasgow Film Festival 2012 is bookended by a pair of distinct cinema voices: two students of the human condition; auteurs whose stories radiate through the screen.

Cannes Grand Prix winner Aki Kaurismäki closes GFF with a flourish. This filmmaker of international renown is a real coup for the festival. He delivers his new work Le Havre, a rare foray away from his native Finland into the northern industrial port of the city that gives the film its title. France is home to many of Kaurismäki’s influences so it can only be imagined that this piece acts as love letter to his Gallic idols. But this is a director never afraid to skewer the cruelties of life. His story of an African refugee taken in by a French shoeshine man (André Wilms, a Kaurismäki regular) will weave heartbreak and torment into a tapestry of delicate comedy. Its unflinching eye is also sure to be the beholder of beauty – we can expect stunning images lovingly photographed.

The opening gala film comes from Seattle’s Lynn Shelton, chosen by Variety as one of its ‘10 Directors to Watch in 2012’. Shelton was a fairly opaque name until 2009’s Humpday, a taboo busting conundrum, more anal than banal, in which two heterosexual buddies consider indulging in sex together, all in the name of art. Her offering here is the warm, intimate Your Sister’s Sister. A despondent Jack (Mark Duplass, one half of Humpday's bromance) is sent to a family cabin by best friend Iris (Emily Blunt) to recover from the loss of his brother. There he meets Iris's sister Hannah (Rosemarie DeWitt). These fragile people drink tequila together and the inevitable happens – humans do as humans do. In this psychologist’s couch of a film Shelton mines the relationship subtleties of this fallen emotional triumvirate, the ifs, buts and most importantly whys.

For its gala screenings GFF has picked two directors who refuse to be muffled by studio politics or bound to the whims of a target market. These are clear enunciators of the challenges that hide behind the curtain of the everyday. Fans of this pair will feel lucky. For those uninitiated, let this be your introduction. [Alan Bett]

+ Three more visionaries bringing films to GFF

1. Sleeping Sickness (Welcome to Germany // 17 and 18 Feb) – Ulrich Köhler drags Germany's colonial heart of darkness into the light with this Silver Bear winner
2. Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (It's a Wonderful World // 25 Feb) – An atmospheric and unusual police drama from Turkish master Nuri Bilge Ceylan
3. Into the Abyss (Stranger than Fiction // 23 and 24 Feb) – The maverick genius and Teutonic drawl of Werner Herzog touches upon the legacy of violence in his new documentary