Glasgow Short Film Festival reveals 2025 programme

Film festivals are political, and film festival programmers have a responsibility to engage with the social and political issues of our time. Few festivals in the UK take that responsibility as seriously as the Glasgow Short Film Festival, which returns 19-23 March with a lineup of film programmes reflecting and responding to many of the challenges facing us in 2025.  

This engagement with the world beyond arts and cinema will surely feel most urgent in GSFF’s collaboration with the Gaza Film Unit, a collective of Palestinian filmmakers who aim to preserve Palestinian narratives, archive their work in cinema and to document the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Members of the collective will head to Glasgow with a programme that we’re told will take audiences “on a journey through Gaza’s past and present, reflecting on what has been lost and what must still be fought for.”

As has already been announced, GSFF 2025 will open with The Disco: A Portrait of Simon Eilbeck, Alex Hetherington’s sound and image paean to DJ Simon Eilbeck and his legendary queer club night Hot Mess. At a time when the rights of the queer community, and in particular the trans community, is under attack, The Disco’s celebration of the community Eilbeck helps bring together each month on the dancefloor is most welcome.  

Still from Frank Sweeney's Few Can See

GSFF will also welcome Irish artist Frank Sweeney, who’ll present his award-winning short Few Can See. Described as a “bold reimagining of Irish broadcast history,” Sweeney’s film blends news excerpts from late-1980s TV covering the Troubles with reenacted footage to explore what was intentionally omitted from the broadcasts, allowing figures from the time the space to express views that were censored. The screening will be followed by a performance by musician and Miuín label boss Neil Quigley. Sweeney will also lead an artist workshop looking at histories of cross-border pirate radio in Ireland. 

The politics of sex on screen is the subject of Xuanlin Tham’s programme Your Body, Dissolving into Me. Curated to complement Tham’s book Revolutionary Desires: The Political Power of the Sex Scene, part of the Inkling series from 404 Ink, the programme is described by GSFF as “celebrating sex and its representations, but also confronts the thorniness of what sex under systems of control and image production entails.”

This year’s retrospective subject is Indonesian filmmaker Riar Rizaldi. Rizaldi's practice deploys a range of cinematic approaches, blending documentary fiction and essay films to explore themes of technology, the environment and the pervading toxicity of capitalism. 

Elsewhere there’s the return of Welcome to the Multiverse, a sequel to GSFF’s programme from a few years ago that dived into weird and wild sci-fi animations. Programme Grieving Tomorrows will explore how grief shapes and dictates our lives. And there’s the first outing of the festival’s inaugural Too Happy Studios Artist Moving Image Commission, which this year was awarded to artist Kialy Tihngang, whose collaboration with sculptor Josie KO, fir gorma, was one of the highlights of last year’s Glasgow International festival. Tihngang’s new film, which will have its world premiere at GSFF, is titled OOO. 

And as ever, the heart of GSFF is its two competitions: The Bill Douglas Award for new international short films and the Scottish Short Film Award celebrating homegrown work. The lineups for those have still to be revealed. 

“I can’t wait to unleash this programme on Glasgow,” says GSFF director Matt Lloyd. “Touching on themes of grief, loss, community and speculative history, it offers a wide-ranging response to, and engagement with, contemporary realities and challenges.”

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Glasgow Short Film Festival takes places at GFT, Civic House and Grosvenor Picture Theatre, 19-23 Mar
Full programme on sale at 12pm on 19 Feb; more info at glasgowshort.org