New season of Outlander to open Glasgow Film Festival’s eclectic programme
The Glasgow Film Festival will return in March with an exclusive preview of Outlander's new season and an inconversation event with The Thick of It creator Armando Iannucci.
A documentary following a 14-year-old Scottish surfing sensation's bid to conquer one of the world’s biggest waves and Alan Cumming's portrayal of notorious schoolboy imposter "Brandon Lee" will also feature.
A new romantic drama set and filmed in the Outer Hebrides, a surreal comedy inspired by Scottish gang culture and a documentary following a man who has lived alone in a hand-made log cabin in the Highlands for 40 years complete a busy festival programme.
The 18th edition of the festival in March will bring back audiences to its home at the Glasgow Film Theatre and the nearby Cineworld after the 2021 event had to be staged entirely online due to Covid restrictions.
The festival, which will screen selected highlights from the programme on its online platform, will return with the UK premiere of Oscar-winner Mark Rylance’s Chicago-set gangster thriller The Outfit, and close with tense famliy drama Murina, an award winner at Cannes last year.
The festival has scored a major coup with a premiere of the feature-length curtainraiser to the eagerly-awaited sixth season of Outlander, the hit time-travel fantasy series that has been filmed in Scotland since 2013.
Highlights of the festival include the premiere of Skint, a new BBC series exploring personal stories of poverty and homelessness, which Scottish actors, directors and writers Peter Mullan, Cora Bissett, Jenni Fagan and Derry Girls creator Lisa Mcgee have all worked on.
The festival has secured the European premiere of My Old School, Jono Mcleod’s drama documentary on Brian Mackinnon, the former Bearsden Academy pupil who duped staff and pupils for two years after re-enrolling when he was 30.
Coming-of-age comedy Angry Young Men, which was made in Hamilton, South Lanarkshire, will follow the efforts of fictional gang The Bramble Boys to defend their turf against their rivals The Campbell Group.
Ride the Wave will follow Tiree-based surfer Ben Larg and his family over the course of three years, culminating in a bid to conquer the 30ft high waves that break off Mullaghore Head in County Sligo in Ireland. Belgian filmmaker Bouli Lanners has directed and starred in the Isle of Lewis-set Nobody Needs To Know, which focuses on a farm hand suffering from memory loss who encounters a woman who tells him they were previously in love.
Documentaries include a profile of Ken Smith, the man dubbed “The Hermit of Treig” for his off-grid existence on the banks of Loch Treig, and Scottish war correspondent David Pratt’s exploration of Iraq’s recent history.