We’ve already given you the lowdown on some of the most head-turning events from this year’s Glasgow Film Festival programme. Since many of those events have already sold out, we’re back with recommendations for some of the more hidden gems in the programme. Festival director Allison Gardner, who retires in October, has always advised attendees to take a chance on films they know nothing about. Excellent advice, but if you’re in need of a little steering, read on…
Two films in the programme deal with women resistance fighters whose ideological and maternal commitments are threatened by state repression. From Hilde, with Love is a biopic of Hilde Coppi, a member of the German Red Orchestra group. The film tracks Hilde’s relationship with her comrade Hans alongside her contributions to the struggle, disseminating information countering Nazi propaganda.


César Díaz’s Mexico 86 stars Bérénice Béjo as a Guatemalan activist who’s forced to leave her country and her son behind during the civil war; mother and son reunite in Mexico ten years later. Díaz’s previous feature Our Mothers screened at the 2020 edition of the festival; it also dealt with the fallout of the war with a focus on its impact on families. Mexico 86 continues Diaz’s exploration of the decades-long conflict and its lingering impact on younger Guatemalans.


Aside from Mexico 86, a couple of other Latin American films in the programme have caught our eye. Fluid in its approach to gender and genre and starring 120 BPM’s Nahuel Pérez Biscayart, Luis Ortega’s Kill the Jockey promises to build on the homoeroticism established in his previous feature El Ángel. And while Brazil celebrates a Best Picture nominee at the Oscars in Walter Salles’ I’m Still Here, why not check out a film by one of Salles’ compatriots? Karim Aïnouz’s Motel Destino follows Heraldo who, while hiding out in a sleazy love motel, begins a risky affair with the owner’s wife. As she did on La Chimera, cinematographer Hélène Louvart creates texture by shooting on a blend of film formats. The heat is palpable, and every bead of sweat is accentuated under the motel’s neon lighting.


Laura Carreira’s On Falling is a study of alienation and precarious working conditions, following a Portuguese worker in a Scottish warehouse. The 2022 edition of the festival featured another film about Portuguese migrant workers, but where Great Yarmouth leant into the workers’ miserable conditions through its gloomy visual language and bleak plot, On Falling strains to emphasise the importance of human connection. Co-produced by Ken Loach’s Sixteen Films, On Falling looks set to be an important new addition to the British social realism canon.


In Natja Bronckhurt’s heist comedy Two to One Sandra Hüller (Anatomy of a Fall), Christian Petzold regular Ronald Zerhfeld, and Max Riemelt (Sense8) star as a trio of friends who stumble upon millions in soon-to-be obsolete East German Marks. With German reunification looming, the clock ticks down on their chances to profit from their discovery. Capturing the chaotic energy of a country on the brink of monumental political and cultural shifts, Two to One is a light-hearted period piece examining the east-west divide.
The Romanian New Wave, associated with filmmakers such as Cristi Puiu (The Death of Mr. Lăzărescu) and Radu Jude (whose Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World was a highlight of last year’s GFF), may have a new torchbearer in Bogdan Muresanu. Muresanu made a strong impression with his 2018 short The Christmas Gift, in which a young boy’s letter to Santa unleashes a panic in his father that reflects nationwide Ceauşescu-era paranoia. His debut feature The New Year That Never Came returns to December 1989, incorporating The Christmas Gift as one of six intersecting vignettes in an ensemble piece about a society on the cusp of revolution and regime change.


Joshua Oppenheimer’s documentaries The Act of Killing and The Look of Silence were singular and unsparing works in their confrontations with the killers behind the anti-communist purges in 1960s Indonesia. He returns after a decade with post-apocalyptic musical The End, and we’d like to think the musical numbers will be less disturbing than The Act of Killing’s musical sequences. The End stars Tilda Swinton, Michael Shannon, and George MacKay as a wealthy family sheltering themselves in a bunker from environmental devastation outside, devastation Shannon’s character has contributed to. With his first narrative feature Oppenheimer continues his interrogation of denialism and the idea that history is written by the victors.


For more dystopian sci-fi, we’re looking forward to Aude Léa Rapin’s Planet B, a troubling thought experiment about the logical conclusion of carceral technologies. Adèle Exarchopoulos (Passages) plays an activist who’s been disappeared to a virtual prison, and Souheila Yacoub (Climax) an undocumented Iraqi journalist facing deportation. Featuring music from Bertrand Bonello, whose score for last year’s The Beast elevated that film’s existential and technological concerns.


This year being the festival’s 21st edition, the theme of this year’s free morning films is coming-of-age narratives, and alongside surefire crowdpleasers like Lady Bird and Gregory’s Girl there are some inspired leftfield selections. Raw, the debut feature of Julia Ducournau (Titane), introduced audiences to her transgressive vision of family and desire. Mustang, which won the Audience Award at the 2016 edition of the festival, is a Virgins Suicides-esque tale of five Turkish sisters living in a patriarchal household. And Pather Panchali, the first in parallel cinema auteur Satyajit Ray’s Apu trilogy, is a poetic rumination on the indignity of rural poverty, and one of the classic films about childhood.
Finally, we urge you to go and see The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. One of the late Maggie Smith’s finest roles, the acerbic wit in her portrayal of the fascist Miss Brodie launched a thousand drag queens. We’ll see you there!
The Glasgow Film Festival takes place from 26th February to 9th March.