Glasgow Film Festival (GFF) has set the first titles and events for its upcoming 20th edition, that will run from February 28 to March 10, 2024, as well as the team with which Allison Gardner will programme the festival, after her long-standing co-director Allan Hunter stepped down following the 2023 edition.
This year’s country in focus will be Czechia, also known as Czech Republic, under the banner ’Czech, please!’
Titles include Is There Any Place For Me, Please? a debut feature documentary and UK premiere from Jarmila Štuková, that showcases an intimate portrayal of one woman navigating life after an acid attack; Karlovy Vary titles Restore Point, a cyberpunk sci-fi directed by Robert Hloz, and Matěj Chlupáček’s period drama We Have Never Been Modern; Petr Hátle’s crime thriller and Tallinn Black Nights premiere Mr. And Mrs. Stodola; and Tomáš Mašín’s drama Brothers, Czechia’s official submission to the 2024 Oscars for best international film, that focuses on an anti-Communist resistance group.
Daisies, a 1966 radical feminist film from Věra Chytilová once banned for its stance on communism and patriarchy, will also screen.
Gardner, CEO of Glasgow Film and director of GFF since 2007, will programme GFF24 alongside a group of emerging voices in the Scottish film festival scene, that she describes as possessing “such vibrant and innovative ideas”. The team is made up of Christopher Kumar, Tomiwa Folorunso, Natasha Thembiso Ruwona, Heather Bradshaw and Rosie Beattie.
The shortlist for the GFF24 audience award – the only award handed out at the festival, given to an outstanding feature by a first or second-time director – will be announced along with the full programme, next year on January 24.
Retrospective titles
Two films that celebrate two landmark years in Glasgow Film’s history will screen as part of the special events strand. The Wizard Of Oz from 1939 will play, to commemorate the year that the Cosmo cinema, now the Glasgow Film Theatre, opened. To mark the 50th anniversary of Glasgow Film Theatre’s opening in 1974, the festival will screen a tribute to schlock auteur John Waters’ Female Trouble, which also celebrates its 50th anniversary.
Free morning retrospectives also return, with 10 titles from Glasgow Film’s history – including Wuthering Heights from 1939; The Godfather: Part II from 1974; and Brick, Walk The Line, and Wolf Creek from the year of the inaugural edition of the festival in 2005.
No comments yet