Glasgow Film Festival 2024: Everything you need to know about Glasgow's Film Festival - movie showings, premieres, timings, and more

The 20th edition of Scotland’s largest film festival will run from 28 February to 10 March at Glasgow Film Theatre (itself celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2024) plus venues across the city.

Glasgow Film will celebrate three major anniversaries this year - 85 years since the opening of Scotland’s first-ever purpose-built arthouse cinema, ‘Cosmo’, on Rose Street in Glasgow in 1939; 50 years since that cinema became Glasgow Film Theatre in 1974; and the 20th edition of Glasgow Film Festival which was launched in 2005.

Glasgow Film Festival (GFF) 2024 will open with the UK premiere of Rose Glass’s new thriller Love Lies Bleeding starring Kristen Stewart, and close with the world premiere of Janey, following Scottish stand-up legend Janey Godley as she embarks on her final live tour following her cancer diagnosis.

Across 12 packed days, the programme boasts 11 world and international premieres, 69 UK premieres and 15 Scottish premieres, from 44 countries.

World and international premieres include Tummy Monster, a hallucinogenic dark drama by Glasgow director Ciaran Lyons, starring rising Scottish star Lorn Macdonald; the big screen adaptation of blackly comic novel Bucky F*cking Dent, written by, directed by and starringDavid Duchovny, and a new restoration of Billy Connolly: Big Banana Feet, the rarely-seen documentary shot during his 1975 tour of Ireland.

UK premieres include real-life father and daughter duo Ewan and Clara McGregor taking a road trip in Bleeding Love, Cynthia Erivo as a Liberian refugee who befriends Alia Shawkat’s American tour guide in Drift, and Viggo Mortensen directing and starring in Western epic The Dead Don’t Hurt.

GFF is one of the leading film festivals in the UK and is run by Glasgow Film, a charity which also runs Glasgow Film Theatre. Glasgow Film Festival is made possible by support from Screen Scotland, the BFI Audience Projects Fund, awarding National Lottery funding and Glasgow Life.

Allison Gardner, CEO of Glasgow Film and Director of GFF, said: “I am extremely proud to have been here for every one of Glasgow Film Festival’s 20 editions. My thanks goes to everyone who has helped us to get this far. Many, many people have worked incredibly hard to make this the friendliest film festival in the world.

"One of my highlights of GFF is our Audience Award, this year sponsored by MUBI. The Audience Award supports emerging talent and it’s a joy to see these films play in front of our dedicated audiences. Watch all 8 of our hand picked films and support these directors at the early stages of their directing careers. 

"Over the years, at Glasgow Film Festival, we have supported Scottish films and talent. Something that we are very proud to have done and this year is no exception.

"We also champion Scottish films from our past and this year we have some fantastic anniversaries to honour. Shallow Grave is 30 years old and Glaswegian Lynne Ramsay’s debut feature Ratcatcher screening from a new 4K print is 25 years old. Our motto is ‘Cinema For All’ and we strive to bring the best films from around the world to Glasgow.

"My advice to everyone is to choose films you know nothing about and take a chance, you might discover a hidden gem (and the programme is positively bursting with them!) that will stay with you forever. Here’s to the next 20 years.”

GFF24 also marks the return of the festival’s beloved special event screenings. Movie fans can click their ruby red slippers together three times to be transported to a magical screening of Victor Fleming’s 1939 technicolour masterpiece The Wizard of Oz at Cottiers Theatre in Glasgow’s West End. For a very different camp classic, there’s a grotesquely glamorous tribute screening to schlock auteur John Waters’ 1974 magnum opus Female Trouble, complete with a live drag show, at Barras Art and Design.

Other classics returning to the big screen include the UK premiers of new 4K restorations of Glasgow-born Lynne Ramsay’s incendiary debut Ratcatcher and Martin Scorsese’s screwball caper After Hours, plus Danny Boyle’s Glasgow-shot Shallow Grave, and Quentin Tarantino’s game-changing sophomore feature Pulp Fiction in 35mm.

Opening and Closing Gala Premieres

GFF24 will open on 28 February with the UK premiere of British director Rose Glass’s hotly-anticipated follow-up to Saint Maud, Love Lies Bleeding. The stylish romantic thriller stars Kristen Stewart as Lou, a reclusive gym owner who falls hard for Jackie (Katy M. O’Brian), an ambitious bodybuilder who's heading to Las Vegas to pursue her dream. Their love soon leads to violence as they get pulled deep into the web of Lou's criminal family.

The festival will close on 10 March with the world premiere of Janey, an honest, moving and often hilarious documentary about Glasgow comedian Janey Godley, interweaving stories from her life with footage from her Not Dead Yet tour in the wake of her terminal cancer diagnosis. Janey found fame for her sweary anti-Trump placards, became a social media sensation as she revoiced First Minister Nicola Sturgeon’s Covid briefings, was called out for controversial historic tweets and was trying to rebuild her career when she received her diagnosis. 

Featuring appearances from familiar faces including Nicola Sturgeon and Jimmy Carr, director John Archer’s feature captures Janey Godley at her most vulnerable and most gallus. Following its world premiere at Glasgow Film Festival, Janey will be released in UK cinemas from 15 March. 

World and European Premieres

Glasgow audiences will be the very first to see 11 world and international premieres on the big screen.

A Scottish comedy icon makes a welcome return to the big screen with a brand new restoration of the little-seen 1976 documentary Billy Connolly: Big Banana Feet. Lovingly restored by the BFI in collaboration with the film’s director Murray Grigor from the only two 16mm prints known to exist, this comedy charmer follows Billy on his legendary 1975 tour of Ireland.

Glasgow director Ciaran Lyons makes his feature debut with Tummy Monster, a hallucinogenic Scottish black comedy about a self-centred tattoo artist (rising Scottish star Lorn Macdonald from GFF19 closing film Beats) who gets embroiled in a bizarre psychological battle with an international popstar. 

UK Premieres

69 feature films will get their first ever UK cinema showing at this year’s GFF as the programme boasts a wealth of comedies, dramas and real-life stories from 37 countries across the world.

Fans of Ewan McGregor are in for a treat as the actor stars in not one but two films at the Glasgow Film Festival. He acts alongside his real-life daughter Clara McGregor in Bleeding Love, a road movie following a young woman embarking on a road trip to New Mexico with her estranged father; McGregor senior also stars alongside Ellen Burstyn and Rhys Ifans in the mind-bendingly surreal comedy Mother, Couch.

FrightFest

The GFT welcomes back FrightFest for its 19th year at GFF, as they take over GFT’s Cinema 1 from 7th to 9th March. The legendary three-day horror binge showcases 11 new feature films from eight countries, spanning three continents and embracing two world premieres, eight UK premieres and one Scottish premiere. World premieres include Mom, a striking, provocative and consuming psychological horror starring Schitt’s Creek Emily Hampshire; and Custom, a paranoid horror thriller from award-winning, Brazilian-born and UK-based filmmaker Tiago Teixeira.

FrightFest kicks off with UK Premiere You’ll Never Find Me, a claustrophobic two-hander set in an Australian RV Park starring Brendan Rock as a lonely man and Jordan Cowan as a mysterious woman who knocks at his door late one night, and wraps up with the UK premiere of hard-hitting diner-invasion thriller Last Straw, marking Alan Scott Neal’s directorial debut.