2023 Glasgow Film Festival Line Up Teases Lynchian odysseys And Bollywood Razzle Dazzle

The first month of 2023 is nearly over which means we are a step closer to the Glasgow Film Festival. Today the festival revealed it’s 2023 line up one that promises Lynchian Odysseys and Bollywood razzle dazzle… And everything in-between.

Anyone who has been to Glasgow knows there will be something for everyone. It is one of the UK’s largest film festivals now celebrating it’s 19th year in existence. This year the festival will host 70 UK premieres, 6 World premieres, 16 European/International premieres and 6 Scottish premieres at Glasgow Film Theatre and venues across the city.

Earlier this month we learned about the opening gala will be Adura Onashile’s feature film debut Girl. The film set to make it’s world premiere at Sundance which is currently happening in the U.S and will make it’s UK premiere in the city it’s set in. The film follows Grace (Déborah Lukumuena) and her 11 year-old daughter Ama (Le’Shantey Bonsu) who are trying to build a new life in Glasgow, a city where everything feels strange and hostile. Traumatised by her past, Grace just wants to keep her daughter safe from harm.

The festival will close on 12th March with another film from Sundance,  The 2023 Festival  with the UK premiere of  Nida Manzoor’s feature debut Polite Society.

This riotous action-comedy will provide the perfect ending to the 2023 Festival, filled with hi-jinks, high kicks and some Bollywood style razzle-dazzle. British Pakistani schoolgirl Ria (Priya Kansara) is an expert martial arts fighter and dreams of a career as a stuntwoman. Her big sister Lena (Ritu Arya) has dropped out of art school and is drifting in limbo until a whirlwind romance threatens to carry her off.

Some of the highlights from Oklahoma auteur Mickey Reece’s new black and white Lynchian odyssey about country music, legacy and cryogenics Country Gold. In a special International Women’s Day Gala UK premiere, Kelly Macdonald and Monica Dolan star in Carol Morley’s fantastical road movie Typist Artist Pirate King, telling the story of real-life outsider artist Audrey Amiss whose extraordinary body of work was only discovered after her death. Nicolas Cage stars in Gabe Polsky’s vividly-realised Western Butcher’s Crossing. Margaret Qualley and Christopher Abbott displaying electrifying chemistry as a dominatrix and her longtime client in Zach Wigon’s twisty thriller Sanctuary.

Other highlights include Glasgow director Andrew Cumming’s buzzworthy debut feature The Origin, an innovative horror set in the Stone Age and shot during the pandemic in the Scottish Highlands. Mia Hansen-Løve’s deeply personal new film One Fine Morning, inspired by the death of her father and featuring a luminous central performance from Léa Seydoux. Plus Raine Allen Miller’s joyful romcom Rye Lane, following two 20-something Londoners as they embark on an impulsive day of mayhem in the city. A film which just had it’s world premiere at Sundance and our writer Freda Cooper just reviewed.

We must not forget The Audience award which is given to an outstanding feature film by a first- or second-time director and is chosen by the audience. This year’s films includes Alauda Ruiz de Azúa’s sweeping Spanish debut feature Lullaby, an authentic portrayal of motherhood and sacrifice; Chandler Levack’s I Like Movies, a semi-autobiographical tale of a hyper-ambitious but socially inept teenage cinephile who gets a job at his local video store; Marianne Blicher’s multi-award winning Miss Viborg exploring love, loss, friendship and new hope; Robert Higgins and Patrick McGivney’s unpicking of macho culture and vulnerability in Irish football in Lakelands featuring rising star Éanna Hardwicke.

Sophie Linnenbaum’s inventive social satire The Ordinaries set in a parallel cinematic world where everyone is divided into three classes – Main Characters, Extras and Outtakes (the lowest of the low); Andrea Bagney’s Spanish comedy Ramona whose titular character is hoping for a fresh start yet torn between head, heart, ambition and fidelity; actor and filmmaker Anthony Shim with his  Prize-winning drama about a Korean single mother trying to raise her son in 1990s suburban Canada, Riceboy Sleeps; Welby Ings’ Punch, starring Tim Roth as the alcoholic father of a young New Zealand boxer who is developing a friendship with a gay Māori teen; director and star Nicolas Giraud’s The Astronaut following a man determined to build his own rocket and pilot in into space; and  Alex Schaad’s Skin Deep, a provocative body-swap film exploring identity, gender fluidity, sexuality and the pursuit of happiness.

Here at The Peoples Movies we are big fans of FrightFest which announced it’s line up last week. We will be there once again, taking place between 9th- 11th March, full details can be found here.

The 2023 Country Focus strand will be Spain and Viva el cine español! showcasing a collection of eight contemporary films from Spain. Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s The Beasts, and Juan Diego Botto‘s On The Fringe starring Penelope Cruz are some of the highlights.

This year’s festival will sadly be Festival co-director Allan Hunter‘s final festival as the director. Allan commented on calling time and the line up “It is always a thrill to raise the curtain on the GFF programme. The string of hand-picked gems for 2023 stretches from glorious new work by home grown talent to the very best that world cinema has to offer. Spanish cinema is a blazing beacon of creativity right now and I can’t wait for audiences to watch a stunning selection of premieres that includes the nail biting, award-winning thriller The Beasts, the irresistible family drama Lullaby and Prison 77, a jail story to rival The Shawshank Redemption. There are so many things I want to recommend from the tense Turkish thriller Burning Days to the magical, eye-popping The Ordinaries, to the latest Lav Diaz epic When The Waves Have Gone. All that plus a free retrospective that allows audiences to see undisputed classics like Bonnie and Clyde and The Piano on the big screen and absolutely free. If you love movies then where else would you want to be in March?”

2023 Glasgow Film Festival will take place between 1st and 12th March.
Tickets for the full GFF23 programme go on sale at 12 noon on Monday 30th January from GFT Box Office, online at www.glasgowfilm.org/festival. Glasgow Film Theatre Cinecard members get 4 days early-access to individual films from Thursday 26th January at noon. Memberships available.