Irish Gaelic thriller Arracht Wins Glasgow Film Festival Audience Award

It’s Sunday Night 8th March, 2020 Glasgow Film Festival is finishing in style  with the UK premiere of How To Build A Girl. The Festival also announces the Audience Award winner and once again celebrates record attendance.

The 16th annual celebration of cinema showcased an array of talent from film and Television. Everyone from George McKay,Simon Pegg, Imogen Poots, Alice Winocour, Celia Imrie, Simon Bird and Emily Beecham to name a few.

The festival has celebrated its highest ever attendance, with more than 43,000 admissions. In addition to the 43,147 attending screenings and events across the city (up from 42,224 at GFF 2019), over 3000 people attended the first ever UK exhibition of work by legendary Hollywood photographer Susan Wood, which ran throughout the festival at The Lighthouse.

GFF closed on International Women’s Day (IWD) with a programme dedicated to female talent both behind and in front of the camera. A number of filmmakers came to celebrate IWD at the festival with their films including Sarah Gavron with Rocks; Saudi Arabia’s first female film director Haifaa Al-Mansour with her new film The Perfect Candidate; and the new feature from 2017 Glasgow Film Festival Audience Award winner Alankrita Shrivastava: Dolly Kitty and Those Twinkling Stars.

The ever popular Festival Audience Award was also announced tonight. The winner was announced before tonight’s big screen adaptation of Caitlin Moran’s memoir (attended by Caitlin and director Coky Giedroyc). The winner was Tom Sullivan’s immensely impressive Irish Gaelic thriller Arracht. The film evoking the desperate times of the 1840s Potato Famine of Ireland . The Audience Award is the only prize handed out by GFF and is voted for by the film festival audiences.

Tom Sullivan, writer and director of Glasgow Film Festival 2020 Award winner Arracht, said: “This was completely unexpected and I am honoured. I would like to, from the bottom of my heart, thank everyone at Glasgow Film Festival for believing in our film and all the people who came and voted. Arracht is a film set during the Great Hunger in Ireland. To win the audience award here, in Glasgow, a city that was so influenced by the fallout of that dark period in our history is truly humbling.

This award belongs to my brilliant cast and crew, the dedicated production team at Macalla and to TG4, Screen Ireland and the BAI. This means so much to all of us. Thank you Glasgow!”

Allison Gardner, Glasgow Film Festival Co-Director, said: “Glasgow Film Festival 2020 has been another brilliant year. Our free strand, ‘Are We There Yet? A Retrospective of the Future’, has been well attended with queues round the block. As always a highlight for me were the Special Events, and doing the Zombie Run at our Train to Busan screening with my colleagues was a particular highlight! One of my personal favourite films of the festival Heroic Losers charmed our audiences and will be part of ‘GFF On Tour’ – our touring festival – this April and May.”

Allan Hunter, Glasgow Film Festival Co-Director, said: “We presented a programme with a diverse, wide-ranging spectrum of cinema experiences and audiences have responded magnificently. One of the joys of the Festival is to see the passion for films as diverse as Arracht, Les Miserables and Our Ladies and the warmth of the welcome for a guest list that included Alice Winocour, Celia Imrie, Simon Pegg and Ingvar Sigurðsson. Our audiences are a tonic and an inspiration.”

Our Festival ended last night, we hope to bring you our reviews soon or closer to the film’s releases. Glasgow Film Festival will return from 24 February to 7 March 2021.