Lee Isaac Chung’s Minari To Open 2021 Glasgow Film Festival
2020 will be a year we all want to forget apart from one memory, the Glasgow Film Festival. The festival was one of the fortunate film festivals to actually run, 2021 will be different. The Film Festival is going nationwide for 17th edition for it’s opening and closing gala films plus much more.
2021 film festival will take place between 24th February running until 7th March. Linking up with cinemas across the four nations, in order to welcome audience members who are not able to travel to Glasgow but still wish to experience their favourite festival on the big screen.
22 cinemas, from An Lanntair in Stornoway, to Chapter Arts Centre in Cardiff, Queen’s Film Theatre in Belfast, and three cinemas across London – BFI Southbank, Barbican and Curzon Soho – GFF premieres will be screening in independent cinemas all around the UK. Further partner cinemas will have exclusive screenings in: Aberdeen, Bo’Ness, Bristol, Dundee, Edinburgh, Ipswich, Inverness, Keswick, Leicester, Manchester, Northampton, Northumberland, Nottingham, Oxford, Sheffield, and Stirling.
The festival will open with the UK premiere of Minari (Wednesday 24 February) is an award-winning autobiographical drama from director and screenwriter Lee Isaac Chung, which won the US Dramatic Grand Jury Prize and US Dramatic Audience Award at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival.
Starring Steven Yeun, best known for playing Glen in The Walking Dead, and his chilling performance in Burning, Minari follows a Korean-American family who move from the big city to a rural Arkansas farm in search of the American Dream. Jacob (Yeun) plans to grow Korean vegetables to sell to other immigrant families. His wife Monica (Yeri Han) is wary of his ambitions, and their two children, five-year-old son David (Alan Kim) and daughter Anne (Noel Kate Cho) are restless in the rural setting. The whole dynamic changes with the arrival of their sly, foul-mouthed grandmother from South Korea, Yuh-Jung Youn. Underneath the instability and challenges, Minari, named after a vegetable otherwise known as Korean Watercress or Chinese Celery, shows the undeniable resilience of a family and what really makes a home.
GFF will close on Sunday 7 March with Curzon’s Spring Blossom, the remarkably assured debut feature from writer, director and actress Suzanne Lindon. Spring Blossom is an elegant tale of a bored Parisian student (Lindon), tired of her routine, who meets an older actor, Raphaël (Arnaud Valois), outside the theatre she passes each day. Curiosity gradually turns to infatuation in a tale of first love that unfolds in the streets and cafes of a sun-kissed Monmartre. Lindon expertly captures the feelings of a teenage girl on the cusp of adulthood, finding and losing herself, all set against a beautiful Parisian backdrop.
Director Suzanne Lindon commented on the news “When I learned that the Glasgow Film Festival had chosen Spring Blossom to be the closing film, I felt very honoured and I realised how lucky I was. Having a passion and being able to live it and to share it with the world is very precious and extremely rare. Today, I realise that this is what happens to me, and I never thought that I would be able to live this experience so young, at only 20. It gives me hope, strength and it intensifies my desire to make films, to play and to feel free to express myself through cinema. I want to thank Allison Gardner and Allan Hunter for having selected Spring Blossom and for allowing it to travel. It is a great honour and the continuity of an extraordinary adventure for me, that of seeing my biggest dream come true.”
“Spring Blossom is a dream of a film. Suzanne Lindon’s autobiographical debut feature is a tale of first love that unfolds on the streets of Montmartre. A major new talent is revealed in a film that captures the promise of life when the sun is shining, the heart is full and the future is filled with possibilities. It sets a perfect mood for the Festival’s Closing Gala and for a time when we all hope to be looking towards brighter days.“ said Allan Hunter, co-director of Glasgow Film Festival.
The full programme for 2021 Glasgow Film Festival will be announced on 14 January. Tickets for the programme, including the Opening and Closing films, will go on sale on Monday 18 January. Find more information at www.glasgowfilm.org/festival. This is our local festival and like every year we will do our best to cover the festival.
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