Scottish Film Events: March 2025

March is chockablock with film festivals. In our March issue you can read features on Glasgow Film Festival (till 9 Mar), Glasgow Short Film Festival and HippFest (both 19-23 Mar). On top of these, there’s the tenth edition of the Catalan Film Festival (8-30 Mar), which brings an eclectic selection of Catalan cinema to venues across Scotland (GFT, Cameo, DCA and Eden Court among others).

Just across the border is Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival (27-30 Mar), which presents a sharply curated programme of formally daring artists’ moving image films and exhibitions. Look out for a retrospective on the work of Japanese filmmaker Eri Makihara – BFMAF’s screenings will be the first time Makihara’s films have exhibited outside of Asia – and the UK premiere of Sacha Amaral’s The Pleasure Is Mine.

One of the most powerful cinema experiences in Scotland this month will surely be Tramway’s screenings of Grenfell, Steve McQueen’s moving document showing the ruins of the tower block fire where 72 people died in 2017. It’s playing at Tramway for a fortnight, from 8 to 23 March, with five screenings of the film per day, which are free but ticketed.

Once the curtain comes down on GFF, Glasgow Film Theatre will host two unmissable retrospectives. They’ve teamed up with Hunterian Museum to present Derek Jarman: Modern Nature on Film. This month they screen Jarman’s The Last of England (16 Mar) and The Garden (30 Mar), with more screenings in April. The second retrospective is a nine-film season dedicated to Chantal Akerman. Jeanne Dielman (15 & 18 Mar), News from Home (23 & 26 Mar) and Je Tu Il Elle (30 Mar, 2 Apr) are the first offerings, with the other six films in April.

Perhaps watching work by these masters of queer cinema will inspire you to take part in SQIFF's Filmmaking Workshops for QTIPOC+ people. These sessions are free; they cover DIY approaches, finding actors, sound recording and editing; and run every Sunday throughout March at Transmission in Glasgow. Details and tickets at sqiff.org/events

To mark International Women’s Day on 8 March, the Moving Image Archive at Kelvinhall in Glasgow are screening the excellent Since Yesterday: The Untold Story of Scotland's Girl Bands alongside some seldom-seen archive footage of Strawberry Switchblade, whose hit single the documentary is named after. The screening will be followed by a Q&A with members of the Scottish riot grrrl band Lung Leg. The event is sold out online, but more tickets will be available on the door on the day.

If that wasn’t enough, there’s also a plethora of Q&A screenings at Cameo in Edinburgh this month. Zacharias Mavroeidis brings his sexy meta-comedy The Summer With Carmen, about two BFFs planning a film while sunning themselves at a nude beach / gay cruising spot, on 3 March; imagine Pedro Almodóvar crossed with Charlie Kaufman to get a sense of its delightful vibe. Laura Carrera presents On Falling, her insightful social realist drama set in Edinburgh, on 13 March. And actor Ryland Brickson Cole Tews is repping the wild slapstick epic Hundreds of Beavers on 18 and 19 March.