James McAvoy’s directorial debut California Schemin’ leads varied, impressive Glasgow Film festival line-up. Details on that below. Glasgow Film Festival is back for another year of movie mayhem and the programme has been unveiled! It’s a corker, too. As we already reported, James McAvoy’s directorial debut California Schemin’ is set to close the film festival ... Glasgow Film Festival announces full 2026 line-up
James McAvoy’s directorial debut California Schemin’ leads varied, impressive Glasgow Film festival line-up. Details on that below.
Glasgow Film Festival is back for another year of movie mayhem and the programme has been unveiled! It’s a corker, too.
As we already reported, James McAvoy’s directorial debut California Schemin’ is set to close the film festival which kicks off in late February. The film fictionalises the story of Silibil N’ Brains, a.k.a. Gavin Bain and Billy Boyd, played by Séamus McLean Ross and Samuel Bottomley.
The festival opens with Felipe Bustos Sierra’s documentary Everybody To Kenmure Street which recounts the 2021 protests in Scotland as two Sikh men were detained and held in an immigration van. As a response, a large group of people staged a sit-in protest as they surrounded the van from all sides for hours.
There’s naturally a large selection of Scottish films to indulge on, with 13 films from Scotland showcased at the festival. Identical brothers Ben McQuaid and Nathan McQuaid bring Welcome to G-Town, a film about aliens landing in Glasgow, and Marc Silver showcases his devastating documentary Molly vs THE MACHINES. The latter focuses on Ian Russell, the father of a 14-year-old Molly Russell who took her own life after being exposed to severe self-harm content on social media.
There’s plenty of star power on screen, too. Charli XCX has co-written, co-produces and stars in Erupcja, a highly-anticipated film from Pete Ohs. Angelina Jolie stars in Couture and Willem Dafoe has two films at the festival, Late Fame and Birthday Party. Not to mention, there’s two different films titled Hen. Only one of them is about a chicken!
The festival also welcomes FrightFest back to Glasgow. Starting on Thursday 5th March, the horror festival runs until Saturday and brings you eight feature films as well as a short film showcase with films only from the UK and Ireland. We’re willing to bet there are some gory delights in store.
The audience award also returns with 10 films selected from all around the world. Eight filmmakers in this category are first-timers and six are women. We raise our hat to that, that’s quite the group.
Here’s a full list of the films competing for the Audience Award:
Live A Little, dir. Fanny Ovesen
Atropia, dir. Hailey Gates
Bouchra, dirs. Orian Barki, Meriem Bennani
First Light, dir. James J. Robinson
The Last One For The Road, dir. Francesco Sossai
Nino, dir. Pauline Loques
On A String, dir. Isabel Hagan
Rebuilding, dir. Max Walker-Silverman
A Place For Her, dir. Mélisa Godet
Pasa Faho, dir. Kalu Oji.
This is far from everything the Glasgow Film festival has to offer. Their programme is delightfully diverse and intriguing and you can find out more about it on their website. If you have a GFT CineCard /CineCard+ card, you can buy tickets to the festival from 10am on Friday 23rd January. General sale begins on 26th January.
Find more information and details on the programme here.
