Francois Ozon’s Potiche will open the seventh Glasgow Film Festival and Kevin Mcdonald’s The Eagle will close.

The seventh Glasgow Film Festival will open with the UK premiere of Francois Ozon’s small town French comedy Potiche starring Catherine Deneuve and Gerard Depardieu on Feb 17.

The closing gala will be the UK premiere of Oscar-winning Glasgow-born director Kevin Mcdonald’s The Eagle which features Channing Tatum as a Roman centurion trying to discover the fate of the lost Ninth Legion, alongside Jamie Bell, Donald Sutherland, Mark Strong, Tahar Ramin and Douglas Henshall.

250 films will screen during the festival, including the world premiere of David Mackenzie’s romantic comedy You Instead starring Luke Treadaway and Natalia Tena, which was filmed over five days at a UK rock festival.

Films receiving their UK premieres include Island, an adaptation of the Jane Rogers novel set in the Hebrides; FrightFest favourite Hobo with a Shotgun starring Rutger Hauer; romantic comedy First Night with Richard E Grant and Sarah Brightman; and superhero saga Griff the Invisible starring True Blood’s Ryan Kwanten.

The international line-up also includes Elio Germano’s Our Life, Cannes Jury prize winner A Screaming Man, Cannes best screenplay winner Poetry and Guillaume Canet’s Little White Lies.

Other highlights of the festival will include a special focus on Indian cinema, Beyond Bollywood, which will put the spotlight on the growth of independent Indian cinema. The section will open with the UK premiere of Dev Benegal’s Road, Movie.

Meryl Streep will be the focus of a special nine-film retrospective, which will include screenings of Kramer vs Kramer, Sophie’s Choice and Out Of Africa.

Running alongside the main festival will be the Glasgow Youth Film Festival, which will open with Simon Pegg and Nick Frost’s comedy Paul and the Glasgow Short Film Festival, now in its fourth year.

Among the guests scheduled to attend the festival will be Ken Loach and his son Oranges And Sunshine director Jim Loach, comic book artist Dave Gibbons, filmmakers Miranda Pennell and Joanna Hogg and legendary Glasgow-born producer Iain Smith.

Funded by the Glasgow Film Theatre, Glasgow City Marketing Bureau, Creative Scotland and for the first time this year, the national events agency EventScotland, the festival will run from Feb 17-27.

Festival director Allison Gardner said: “We have always pledged to create a Festival that truly offers something for all tastes and this year we have achieved that on an even greater scale. The programme runs from mainstream to arthouse, vintage to futuristic and we have maintained affordable prices that make the Glasgow Film Festival accessible to all pockets.”

Co-director Allan Hunter (who is a critic for Screen) added: “We look forward to announcing further special guests and appearances in the run up to the Festival’s opening night on Thursday 17 February and to a hugely successful 2011 festival experience.”