Five to see at GFF, 22 Feb: Network & Demolition

Today's Glasgow Film Festival highlights include Jake Gyllenhaal in full quirk mode (Demolition), Patricio Guzmán bringing beauty and humanity to tragedy (The Pearl Button) and TV news satire Network screened in the most appropriate location imaginable (the BBC Scotland building)

Arabian Nights Volume 1: The Restless One

GFT, 6.15pm

Miguel Gomes’ last film was the spellbinding Tabu, and he works similar magic with this sly, three-part remix of Scheherezade’s classic fairy tales. Don’t miss part one.

We recently interviewed Gomes about the film and begun my asking whether he sees Arabian Nights as three films or one six-hour epic “It’s a miracle! A Catholic miracle! The Holy Trinity!" he said. "We thought it would be interesting to have the film divided like the book – it’s so huge that normally it’s divided into volumes, but it would be interesting if each one of them had their own soul. So, for me, it is the three. And I guess that each film is having a dialogue with the others, and this dialogue is really the film.”

Read our full interview with Miguel Gomes

Network

BBC Scotland, 7pm

The idea of watching Sidney Lumet’s merciless TV news satire inside the bowels of Scotland’s home of TV news is too delightful to pass up. Hopefully it won’t inspire Reporting Scotland’s Sally Magnusson to lose her shit on air.

Margaret Tait Award

GFT, 7.20pm

Named after the great Scottish experimental filmmaker, the Margaret Tait award is always one of the gems of GFF's Crossing the Line strand. Each year the prize goes to a Scottish-based artist who works with moving images, and this year's winner was Duncan Marquiss. We don't know much about Marquiss's film Evolutionary Jerks & Gradualist Creeps yet, other than it features two scientists who begin discussing evolutionary biology only for the conversation spils over into cultural evolution. Want more reason to head along to this world premiere? Tickets are free.

Demolition

GFT, 8.30pm

Back when he was doing guff like The Day After Tomorrow, did anyone expect Jake Gyllenhaal to develop into the most interesting young actor in America? Sometimes his risk-taking pays off (Nightcrawler) and sometimes it doesn't (Southpaw), but he never sits still. His latest sees him play a widower trying to cope with the loss of his wife by destroying all evidence of their life together, including their home. The comic drama is marshalled by Quebecois director Jean-Marc Vallee (Dallas Buyers Club, Wild).

The Pearl Button

CCA, 8.45pm

Nostalgia for the Light, the previous film from Chilean documentarian Patricio Guzmán, drew a link between astronomy and the ongoing search for those murdered during Pinochet’s reign. In this equally mesmerising film he investigates the significance of water on his nation's tragic history.