Scottish Film Events: April 2026

There’s an earthy new film festival on the block! Fiends in the Furrows (23-26 Apr) is a celebration of folk horror from cinema collectives Leith Kino and Cinetopia. Events kick off on 23 April at Leith Dockers Club with Ken Russell’s silly, sexy, batshit crazy The Lair of the White Worm. Other folk classics on the docket include The Wicker Man (25 Apr) and Watership Down (26 Apr), and also on 26 April, there's a double-bill of Enys Men and Rose of Nevada from the modern master of folk horror, Mark Jenkin (for more Mark Jenkin, check out Cameo’s Q&A screening of Rose of Nevada on 21 Apr). Additional Fiends in the Furrows screenings are planned at Leith Depot, but the rest take place outdoors at Dock Place. We hope the organisers have made an appropriate sacrificial offering to ward off April showers.

There’s more folk-inflected cinema on offer at Folk Film Gathering (1-10 May, Cameo and The Scottish Storytelling Centre), which, as usual, offers a programme of new and archive folk cinema from across the world, with unique one-off live musical performances attached to most screenings. Experimental cinema fans, meanwhile, should make their way to Hawick in the Borders for the Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival (30 Apr-3 May). Expect a wealth of world-class artists’ film and moving image (a highlight looks to be the UK premiere of An Incomplete Calendar, the new feature by Sanaz Sohrab), but what makes this festival unmissable is its ability to engage politically with the world outside the festival bubble while also creating a genuine sense of community within it. Read more in the April mag.

Another film festival taking place outside the Central Belt is SANDS in St Andrews (17-19 Apr). The festival's founder, Joe Russo, the MCU's go-to director, continues to flex his thick contact book, with guests this year including Scottish composer Craig Armstrong and filmmaker Charlie Kaufman, as well as pioneering feminist scholar and filmmaker Laura Mulvey (who I'm guessing Russo had no hand in booking). Speaking of Craig Armstrong, he's also at the GFT on 9 April to introduce Moulin Rouge! as part of the cinema's season dedicated to Armstrong's regular collaborator Baz Luhrmann – Strictly Ballroom (25+29 Apr) and Romeo + Juliet (11+14 Apr) also screen alongside the Aussie director's new doc: EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert (16-22 Apr).

A cult cinema icon pays a visit to Cameo this month. Mink Stole, a fixture in so many John Waters films, joins San Francisco drag impresario Peaches Christ for IDOL WORSHIP, an intimate and heartfelt cabaret show celebrating outsider art. Expect film clips, live musical numbers, and behind-the-scenes tales from a true icon of underground cinema (16 Apr).

Less iconic were Timothée Chalamet’s derogatory remarks about ballet and opera. He’s putting things right, though, by appearing at the Festival Theatre on 1 April as the lead in a new adaptation of Dune from Scottish Opera, which will act as a fundraiser for the cash-strapped Edinburgh International Festival. The music comes courtesy of EsDeeKid.

If you missed the Edinburgh and Glasgow legs of the Catalan Film Festival, be sure to make the final screenings at Dundee Contemporary Art: Carla Simón’s Romería and a programme of Catalan short films (both 4 Apr).

Last month Filmhouse began its We've Got a Cinema and We're Not Afraid to Use It season, which features films that fall out of the usual exhibition context, say a re-release, retrospective or thematic season. In other words, it's basically an excuse for the cinema’s programme team to screen films they adore apropos of nothing. This month, they go for One from the Heart (9 Apr) and Planet of the Apes (23 Apr). A similar philosophy is at play in Cameo’s ongoing RepHouse strand. This month, the Edinburgh cinema's eclectic mix of rep titles includes East of Eden (5-7 Apr), After Hours (13-16 Apr), What’s Up Doc? (17-18 Apr), Written on the Wind (19-21 Apr) and Drunken Master (24 Apr).