Glasgow Film Festival packed with premieres

Glasgow's 14th annual celebration of cinema '“ now one of the largest film festivals in the UK '“ will feature over 330 separate events and screenings, showcasing over 180 films from 51 countries including six World premieres, seven European premieres, 77 UK premieres and 52 Scottish premieres.
The Party's Just Beginning will have its world premiere at the Glasgow Film Festival.The Party's Just Beginning will have its world premiere at the Glasgow Film Festival.
The Party's Just Beginning will have its world premiere at the Glasgow Film Festival.

The festival will open next week, on Wednesday, February 21, with the UK premiere of Wes Anderson’s animated adventure Isle of Dogs, and close on Sunday, March 4, with the World premiere of the rousing Scottish feature documentary Nae Pasaran, telling the true story of the group of Scots who defied a dictatorship.

Karen Gillan will attend the red carpet gala World premiere of her directorial debut The Party’s Just Beginning, a fiercely honest tale of loss, grief and survivor’s guilt filmed in Inverness and Glasgow.

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The World premiere of Felipe Bustos Sierra’s Nae Pasaran will offer a resounding end to this year’s festival.

The Scottish-made documentary charts the incredible true story of the East Kilbride Rolls Royce factory workers who managed to ground half of Chile’s Air Force from the other side of the world, in the longest single act of solidarity against Pinochet’s brutal dictatorship.

BAFTA Scotland nominated Douglas King makes the leap from shorts to features with the World premiere of the Glasgow-filmed Super November, starring comedian Josie Long as a Clydebank librarian, who meets the love of her life, played by Sean Biggerstaff, just as Western civilization crumbles.

The Camino Voyage, another incredible true story of dedicated individuals, will also have its World premiere at the Glasgow Film Festival on Wednesday, February 28.

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A writer, two musicians (including Glen Hansard, who won the Best Original Song Oscar for ‘Falling Slowly’ from Once), an artist and a stonemason embark on an epic, three-year pilgrimage from Ireland to Northern Spain in a handmade Naomhóg rowing boat in this modern-day Celtic odyssey.

David Tennant stars in a new rom-com with a twist You, Me and Him which gets its first European screening at the festival, with the star himself in attendance alongside director Daisy Aitkens.

Other European premieres include Geena Davis in the crowd-pleasing coming-of-age gem Don’t Talk To Irene, and acclaimed screenwriter Mari Okada making her directorial debut with the animated fantasy Let’s Decorate the Promised Flowers in the Farewell Morning (Sayonara no Asa ni Yakusoku no Hanao Kazarou).

Glasgow Film Festival 2018 will host a staggering 77 UK premieres across 12 days, as Hollywood legend Bill Pullman flies into Glasgow for the UK premiere of his acclaimed new Western The Ballad of Lefty Brown.

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UK audiences will also get the first chance to see Wim Wenders’ thrilling romance Submergence, starring James McAvoy and Alicia Vikander; Roya Sadat’s scathing dissection of Afghanistan’s changing political climate in A Letter To The President; Diane Kruger in the winner of the 2018 Golden Globe for Best Picture (Foreign Language), the emotionally charged revenge story In The Fade; Kathleen Hepburn’s debut feature Never Steady, Never Still with an extraordinary lead performance from Shirley Henderson; Gemma Arterton as an ordinary woman making difficult decisions alongside Dominic Cooper in The Escape; and Toni Collette and Harvey Keitel sparkling in a fairytale vision of Paris in Madame.

Glasgow anime fans will also be the first to see the hotly-anticipated Mary and The Witch’s Flower as it gets its UK premiere.

Meanwhile, Lynne Ramsay will return home to Glasgow to introduce the Scottish premiere of her eagerly-awaited new feature You Were Never Really Here, a brutal noir with an unforgettable lead performance from Joaquin Phoenix.

With 52 Scottish premieres in total, Glasgow Film Festival audiences will also be the first in the country to enjoy Carol director Todd Haynes’ imaginative and charming new film Wonderstruck; the 2018 Best Foreign Language Film Oscar nominee A Fantastic Woman, with Daniela Vega in a star-making turn as a trans woman dealing with the fallout of her partner’s death; and Xavier Legrand’s tense look at the fallout from a bitter domestic dispute in Custody, which netted him the Venice Film Festival Best Director prize.

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Then there’s the plaintive teen drama A Ciambra, drawn from true stories of life among Italy’s Romani community; the big screen adaptation of League of Gentlemen creator Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman’s terrifying West End stage smash hit Ghost Stories; and the beguiling final screen outing of the late, great Harry Dean Stanton in Lucky.

Tickets and information about more films at the festival are available at glasgowfilm.org/festival.

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