Glasgow Film Festival 2025: Your guide to all the premieres at GFF2025 – including special events and more

Across 12 packed days, Scotland’s largest annual celebration of cinema will showcase 92 World, UK and Scottish premieres from 39 countries.

GFF25 will open on Wednesday 26 February with the Gala World premiere of tour-de-force survival thriller Tornado, the hotly anticipated sophomore feature from Scottish director John Maclean (Slow West) featuring Tim Roth, Jack Lowden and Kōki.

The festival will close on Sunday 9 March with the Gala World premiere of award-winning Scottish documentary-maker Martyn Robertson’s Make It To Munich.

The Glasgow Film Festival will also welcome Glasgow-born Hollywood star James McAvoy for a special In Conversation event, looking back at his career.

Hill – The story of Damon Hill – the man who claimed the Formula 1 World Championship in 1996.

Fear – The first episode of major new Amazon Studios produced thriller Fear, shot in Glasgow’s West End and starring GFF favourites Martin Compston, Solly Macleod and James Cosmo, ahead of its UK release later this year.

The Players – a 1990s coming-of-age drama about teenage actor Emily, cast as the youngest member of an avant garde theatre production,

Stationed at Home – following a small-city taxi driver in 1998 awaiting the sight of the International Space Station.

Long Day’s Journey Into Night – Jessica Lange, Ed Harris, Ben Foster and Colin Morgan lead in a star-studded adaptation of Eugene O’Neill’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play: Long Day’s Journey Into Night. Hollywood legend Jessica Lange will also take part in an exclusive In Conversation event, looking back at her six decades-long screen career, from King Kong and Tootsie to Rob Roy and American Horror Story.

The Return – sees The English Patient stars Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche reunite in a new version of Homer’s Odyssey;

Luckiest Man In America – an engrossing game-show thriller based on the true story of an ice-cream truck driver (Paul Walter Hauser) whose winning streak on ‘Press Your Luck’ threatens to bankrupt the production company

McVeigh – A story following the Army veteran responsible for the deadliest act of domestic terrorism in USA history

Went Up The Hill – A New Zealand ghost story.

Ghostlight – A story following a construction worker involved in an am-dram production of Romeo and Juliet;

Bob Trevino Likes It – A true story of an unlikely Facebook friendship starring Barbie Ferreira and John Leguizamo

Stealing Pulp Fiction – A comedy heist film about three aspiring Hollywood friends who plot to steal Quentin Tarantino’s personal 35mm print.

Ebony & Ivory – An absurdist comedy about two highly-strung musical legends who meet in an isolated cottage to discuss a possible collaboration.

Peaches Goes Bananas – An intimate insight into the world of queer feminist icon Peaches shot over 17 years and ranging from her immersive high energy stage extravaganzas to her cherished quiet life

Desire: The Carl Craig Story – Delving into Black American music history through the story of the Detroit techno legend.

Homegrown – an engrossing dive into the lives of three Donald Trump-supporting patriots in the run-up to the 2020 election and its aftermath, which led to the attack on the Capitol.

I Do Not Come To You By Chance – an unemployed young graduate who becomes embroiled in his uncle’s scam email business;

Kill The Jockey – A stylish, gender-fluid Argentinian crime caper

Daniela Forever – a Spanish sci-fi romance starring Henry Golding as a bereaved man who enrolls in a clinical trial for a drug that allows him to reunite with his lost lover

Queens – Klaudia Reynicke’s heartwarming autobiographical drama charting an estranged father’s attempts to reconnect with his daughters as they and their mother prepare to leave the turbulence of 1990s Peru for a new life in the USA

Some Nights I Feel Like Walking – a queer road movie from the Phillipines about a band of street hustlers honouring their friend’s dying wish: to take his body home

Planet B – Aude Léa Rapin’s buzzy French feminist dystopian thriller

Red Path – a Tunisian drama that captures the contrast between childhood innocence and violence as young Arabic shepherd Ashraf deals with his cousin’s murder

Nice Days – the third instalment in Japan’s ever-popular Baby Assassins series, which sees loveable freelance killers Chisato and Mahiro attempt to take a holiday from the bloodshed.

Harvest – A Middle Ages Scottish folk horror, shot entirely on location in Argyllshire.

The End – A musical fantasy about a rich family sheltering from the end of the world in a converted salt mine

Four Mothers – Starring Glasgow’s James McArdle as leading man, a Young Adult author and carer for his non-verbal mum whose friends all ditch him with their own mums so they can go party at Pride

The Surfer – Nicolas Cage stars in a trippy psychological thriller about a dad who is pushed to the edge by local surfers when he returns to his beloved childhood beach with his son

Boys go to Jupiter – an alternative comedy about a teenager in suburban Florida hustling to make $5000.

The Extraordinary Miss Flower – the new performance film brings to life the remarkable true story of the extraordinary Geraldine Flower and the discovery of a suitcase of love-lorn letters sent to her in the 1960s and 1970s

Gloria! – a seemingly mute maid at a musical institution for orphaned girls discovers a talent for piano which sparks a rebellious revolution amongst the girls.

U Are The Universe – Ukrainian science-fiction drama centres on a lone astronaut embarking on a dangerous mission in search of connection

On Falling – shot on location in Glasgow and Edinburgh, and produced by Ken Loach’s Sixteen Films. is an honest and raw depiction of loneliness and the instability of the gig economy through the eyes of Portuguese warehouse picker Aurora.

Audiences can start every GFF day with a free showing of a bonafide classic back on the big screen.

For 2025, the retrospective programme’s theme is ‘Our Time is Now: Coming of Age in the Movies’ to tie in with the 21st edition of GFF.

Tickets for the free retrospective screenings are not available to book and can be collected from Glasgow Film Theatre’s Box Office on the morning of the screenings which take place at 10.30am during the festival.

Titles include:

• A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945) – about the tumultuous life of a family in 1900 Brooklyn, told through the eyes of a teenager
• Pather Panchali (1955) – which follows a young man’s journey with his family in search of a better life
• The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969) – starring the late Dame Maggie Smith as an eccentric and liberated school teacher whose ideas of life and love have an influence on her students
• Gregory’s Girl (1981) – which exposes the awkwardness and joy of first love
• Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982) – brings together a youthful Sean Penn, Nicolas Cage and Jennifer Jason Leigh as rebellious high schoolers
• Boyz N the Hood (1991) – following teenagers growing up in South Central LA surrounded by guns, drugs and the violence of everyday life
• This is England (2006) – that captures a snapshot of working class England in the early Thatcher years
• Mustang (2015) – follows five sisters living under their family’s strict rules
• Raw (2016) – a disturbing take on growing up
• Lady Bird (2017) – starring Saoirse Ronan and Timothée Chalamet.

GFF’s much-loved, highly anticipated special event screenings return this year at atmospheric venues across the city and feature some pre-screening surprises.

GFF will make noise at Govan’s Grand Ole Opry for a special 25th anniversary screening of millennial favourite Coyote Ugly with all-singing, all-dancing entertainment.

This is all before film lovers ascend the steps of Cottiers in Glasgow’s West End to take their seats at Muriel’s Wedding and celebrate 30 years of Toni Collette’s breakthrough performance of Australia’s most endearing anti-hero. Cottiers will also embrace the supernatural and host Andrew Fleming’s feminist horror classic The Craft for an evening of all things occult.

The pioneering Sweden-born actor and director Mai Zetterling will be celebrated in a special retrospective marking the centenary of her birth.

From her on-screen roles including the intriguing war-time thriller The Man Who Finally Died (starring Zetterling alongside Peter Cushing and Stanley Baker) and British noir Blackmailed co-starring Dirk Bogarde, to her diverse directorial features like the fearlessly feminist and sexually frank 1964 debut Loving Couples (which saw the Mayor of Cannes ban the poster as it featured naked silhouettes).

Scrubbers, a raw depiction of the relationships and rivalries in a girls’ borstal unit, starring a young Kathy Burke; and her Venice Golden Lion-winning short The War Game, exploring how young boys are exposed to violence through play, this is a rare opportunity to re-discover the career of a true feminist film pioneer.

GFF is partnering with BFI and BFI Southbank will present a retrospective celebrating the centenary of Mai Zetterling in May 2025.

The From the Heart of Europe: Austria on Screen programme brings an eclectic mix from hard-hitting drama to absurdist comedy.

Josef Hader’s tragicomedy Andrea Gets a Divorce about a policewoman whose life is turned upside down after an accident with her ex-husband, is joined by Gina, directed by Ulrike Kofler, which inspects the impact of generational poverty.

Satirical mockumentary Piggy Bank directed by and starring Christoph Schwarz takes a swipe at performative activism and middle-class apathy and sits alongside Peacock an absurd drama directed by Bernhard Wenger (whose style has been compared to Yorgos Lanthimos).

Veni Vidi Vici takes a stab at the lives of the rich and powerful, helmed by directorial duo Juliane Niemann and Daniel Hoesel.

From the Heart of Europe also brings one of Austria’s most famous and audacious filmmakers, Michael Haneke’s classics back to the big screen, with perverse drama The Piano Teacher (2001) starring Isabelle Huppert as a sexually repressed teacher romantically pursued by her younger student; and disturbing psychological thriller Hidden (Caché) (2005) starring Juliette Binoche and Daniel Auteuil as a couple tormented by a stranger keeping them under surveillance.

The long-celebrated FrightFest returns for its 20th year at GFF and boasts 11 new feature films and seven short films, spanning three continents and five countries. The programme will unveil eight world premieres, two international premieres, five UK premieres and three Scottish premieres in a fear-fuelled Glasgow Film Theatre from 6-8 March.

FrightFest kicks off with Psyche, Stephon Stewart’s poignant exploration of isolation, psychological tension, survival and human vulnerability in a story that follows Mara (Sarah Ritter) adrift in limbo before embarking on a quest to uncover the meaning of life.

On the final day of FrightFest, the scariest villain from our collective childhoods returns: Rumplestiltskin. A haunting tale made even darker, bloodier and nastier by Andy Edwards.

The love for documentaries at this year’s festival bleeds into the FrightFest line-up with Rupert Russell’s The Last Sacrifice having its UK Premiere in Glasgow. The unsettling true-crime interrogation reveals the terrifying real-life 1945 killing that inspired the classic shocker, The Wicker Man.

Documentary enthusiasts can also relish in Michael Flesher’s Hearts of Darkness: The Making of The Final Friday, a probing documentary wherein Adam Marcus (Secret Santa) shows us a never-seen-before look at the controversial ninth episode in the iconic series exploring pressures and studio scrutiny.

Horror lovers can also gorge on David Luke Rees’ directorial debut and world premiere By The Throat packed with nightmares, hallucinations and evil forces.

Socio-political feminist thriller from Izzy Lee, Houses of Ashes, where a grieving widow must survive psychological and supernatural horrors while under house arrest.

A Mother’s Embrace, Cristian Ponce’s second feature that follows a young firefighter’s attempts to save the elderly residents of a local nursing home, with more than just the perilous storm outside to contend with.

Paul Boyd’s Scared to Death that follows a group of filmmakers as they attend a seance at an abandoned children’s orphanage.

A war-time sci-fi adventure that sees the inhabitants of a sleepy English village fighting aliens from another world, against a backdrop of the Second World War in Jack Lawrence McHenry’s The Doom Busters.

Other highlights include Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker Pedro Kos’ feature debut In Our Blood, a twisted tale that masterfully blends psychological mystery with chilling horror; and The American Backyard, the latest gothic thriller from Pupi Avati, known for his cult shockers (The House with Laughing Windows, Zeder), based on Avati’s novel and informed by the infamous true crimes of The Monster of Florence.

The FrightFest Shorts Showcase on 8 March platforms seven titles, two of which are from Scottish filmmakers bringing us two world premieres.

A campfire horror story from Ancient Rome, By The Light of the Fire, from Luke Cossimo Keogh

Pumpkin Guts from Bryan M Ferguson, a horror set on Halloween.

The international premiere of Irish title Conveyance from Gemma Creagh will also grace the big screen in GFT.

The programme bursts with British talent including director duo Henry Leroy Salta and Alexander Tol with Mulch, Kyran Davies’ Canary Bones, Ali Cook’s The Pearl Comb, and The Birdwatcher from Ryan Mackfall.