Glasgow Film Festival has lined up a cavalcade of… | Little White Lies

Festivals

Glas­gow Film Fes­ti­val has lined up a cav­al­cade of pre­mieres for 2023

25 Jan 2023

Words by Charles Bramesco

A young woman wearing an ornate green and gold outfit, including a headpiece with jewels. She is raising her hand in a dramatic gesture.
A young woman wearing an ornate green and gold outfit, including a headpiece with jewels. She is raising her hand in a dramatic gesture.
Adu­ra Onashile’s debut Girl will open the fest, and Nida Man­zoor’s Polite Soci­ety will close it out.

Enter­tain­ment reporters may throw around the phrase ​“fes­ti­val sea­son” because it some­times helps us spin a nar­ra­tive out of twelve months, but film fes­ti­vals are real­ly a year-round thing. Case in point: Sun­dance is cur­rent­ly in full swing, Berlin is rar­ing and ready to go next month, and now the Glas­gow Film Fes­ti­val has filled in the next spot on the cal­en­dar with the unveil­ing of its program.

The full press blast teas­es a cav­al­cade of pre­mieres at the glob­al and UK-spe­cif­ic lev­el, start­ing and end­ing with a pair of Sun­dance titles mak­ing their way across the Atlantic. As its open­ing night film, the fes­ti­val has select­ed Adu­ra Onashile’s debut Girl, a dra­ma that sees an African moth­er and child new to Glas­gow fac­ing dis­crim­i­na­tion from locals as well as the haunt­ing mem­o­ries of their past. For clos­ing night, they’re bring­ing in Nida Manzoor’s action-com­e­dy Polite Soci­ety, in which a British-Pak­istani teen imag­ines her­self as a mar­tial arts hero­ine sav­ing her old­er sis­ter from the hor­rors of arranged marriage.

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A hand­ful of buzzy titles already seen else­where will attract some fresh eye­balls with a spot in Glas­gow, includ­ing LWL fave How to Blow Up a Pipeline, star­ry Berli­nale tech-world dra­ma Black­Ber­ry, the TIFF-approved BDSM char­ac­ter piece Sanc­tu­ary, Director’s Fort­night stand­out God’s Crea­tures, and also in from Cannes, the unortho­dox fam­i­ly dra­ma The Five Dev­ils. Scotland’s pre­mier film fes­ti­val will also show some home­town pride by bring­ing in Kel­ly Mac­don­ald for the UK pre­mière of Car­ol Morley’s road movie/​Audrey Amiss biopic Typ­ist Artist Pirate King.

As for world pre­mieres, they’ve got I Am Week­ender, which explores the lega­cy of a for­ma­tive doc­u­men­tary about the 1992 acid house scene, lat­er a major influ­ence on Trainspot­ting; Dog Days, a Scot­tish pro­duc­tion about a man liv­ing on the streets of Dundee and try­ing to turn his life around using his god-giv­en musi­cal tal­ents; and the Muham­mad Ali bio-doc Cas­sius X: Becom­ing Ali, a trea­sure trove of nev­er-before-seen archival footage.

The main selec­tion will be sup­ple­ment­ed by an embar­rass­ment of addi­tion­al offer­ings, includ­ing the hor­ror side­bar Fright­fest (where atten­dees can see Blood and Hon­ey, the freak­show tak­ing full advan­tage of Win­nie the Pooh’s entry into the pub­lic domain), a spe­cial sec­tion focused on the cin­e­ma of Spain (includ­ing Rodri­go Sorogoyen’s Cannes-fet­ed The Beasts), and a ret­ro­spec­tive series of films fea­tur­ing women seiz­ing con­trol of their lives (Bon­nie and Clyde, Thel­ma and Louise, and It Hap­pened One Night, to name a few). There’s plen­ty more to peruse in the full list­ing at Glasow Film Fest’s offi­cial site, teas­ing a fes­ti­val that’s not just a treat for locals, but a rea­son for vis­i­tors from around the world to set a course for Scotland.

The 19th Glas­gow Film Fes­ti­val will run from 1 to 12 March.

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