Glasgow Film Festival 2017: 10 to see

The 13th annual Glasgow Film Festival (GFF) opens its doors from 15-26 February 2017, offering up more than 310 events and screenings across the city. Things get under way with an opening night screening of the Irish coming-of-age drama Handsome Devil, before the curtain comes down 12 days later with the world premiere of Mad to Be Normal, starring David Tennant as the Scottish psychiatrist R.D. Laing.

In between come films from 38 different countries, including a host of other world and UK premieres. GFF also presents the first Scottish outings for buzz titles such as Ben Wheatley’s Free Fire, Olivier Assayas’s Personal Shopper and Hope Dickson Leach’s The Levelling.

Here are 10 films and events to look out for beyond the gala screenings.

First- and second-time directors are collected together in GFF’s Pioneer strand, and second features don’t come much more assured than this era-spanning tale from critic-turned-filmmaker Kleber Mendonça Filho. Building on the stunning promise of his debut, Neighbouring Sounds (2012), Aquarius features a formidable performance from Sonia Braga as the last resident of the eponymous apartment block in Recife, who is determined to hang on to her beloved flat despite aggressive advances by developers hoping to replace the building. Shot in bold and memorable colours, this is a beautifully observed study of one woman’s extraordinary resolve.

One of the highlights of the festival’s experimental Crossing the Line section should be this special event, bringing together live music with work by two directorial giants: David Lynch and Chris Marker. Lynch’s moodily evocative black-and-white photographs of factories are accompanied by a sonic response from HEXA (Xiu Xiu’s Jamie Stewart and drone master Lawrence English), while Marker’s time-travelling short La Jetée (1962), famously composed of still frames, will be accompanied by new live narration by Alasdair Hankinson and a score by sound artists Tim Shaw and Sébastien Piquemal. Mysteriously, the festival programme advises the audience to come with their phones fully charged and switched on…

Timed for the 150th anniversary of the Canadian Confederation, GFF is presenting an overview of modern films from Canada, and the pick of the bunch may be this unsettling drama from documentary-turned-fiction filmmaker Philippe Lesage. It’s a story of childhood set in a suburb of Montreal where disturbing stories of child abduction are starting to grip the town. There are elements of the icy thrillers of Claude Chabrol and Michael Haneke, along with a big dollop of inspiration from the 1970s Spanish masterpiece Cría cuervos, but Les Démons still feels bracingly fresh and original. Do not miss.

The CineMasters strand rounds up a host of exciting new films by the world’s master filmmakers, and this year Paul Verhoeven makes a renewed bid to be considered for the top table. After a decade’s silence, since the Second World War thriller Black Book (2006), he’s returned with the deliciously provocative revenge drama Elle. The film begins with a horrific rape scene but then begins to twist in unexpected directions, as the head of a video games company (played magnificently by Isabelle Huppert) attempts to work out the identity of her assailant. Verhoeven’s film has been earning critical hosannas since it premiered at Cannes 2016, and this Glasgow screening offers a chance to discover what the fuss is about before it goes on general release in March.

Jazz fans will want to make a beeline for this new Swedish documentary about Lee Morgan. Trumpeter on a host of key Blue Note albums as leader, as well as backing John Coltrane on his classic Blue Train record, Morgan lived a tragically short life: he died at 33 after being shot by his common-law wife in 1972. Kasper Collin’s film attempts to get at some understanding of that troubled relationship, as well as of Morgan’s extraordinary music, via archive footage and remembrances from the likes of Albert Heath and Wayne Shorter.

In GFF’s Local Heroes section, you’ll find a showcase of the best current homegrown filmmakers, including new films by the likes of Terence Davies and Mark Cousins. There’s also quite a rare opportunity to see Bill Forsyth’s Pacific Northwest-set drama Housekeeping (1987), alongside a number of very striking directorial debuts. One of the finest of these is the first film by theatre director William Oldroyd, who has uprooted Nikolai Leskov’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk and set it down in 19th-century Northumbria. Florence Pugh is on magnificent form as the woman scorned.

The festival’s Dangerous Dames strand is a celebration of the femme fatales who light up so many classic film noirs with their deadly allure. From canonical stuff such as The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946) to more recent fare such as The Last Seduction (1994), you honestly can’t go wrong with anything in this section, but the less well-known Leave Her to Heaven (1945) may be the revelation. A rare 1940s noir filmed in colour, it’s a masterful melodrama starring Gene Tierney as a newlywed whose jealousy over her husband escalates to murderous heights.

The word on this hand-drawn French animation is that it’s a charmer. It’s about an elderly woman who spends every summer in the coastal resort of Biligen-sur-Mer, but one year misses the train home. With only her dog for company, she is forced to build a cabin on the beach and live out the winter like Robinson Crusoe on his desert island. A favourite when it premiered at the Annecy International Animation Festival, Jean-François Laguionie’s film has drawn inevitable comparisons with Studio Ghibli, and Pixar’s Up could also be a reference point for this rare animated foray into the subject of ageing.

Ok, this one sounds kinda terrifying… A 35th anniversary screening of John Carpenter’s Antarctica-set sci-fi horror The Thing (1982) on the indoor ski slope at Snow Factor. In the dark. Audiences are being encouraged to wrap up in winter attire and climbing boots to settle in for what promises to be a hair-raising experience.

This year’s GFF is also raising its glass in the direction of the legendary Japanese actor Toshiro Mifune, whose career is celebrated in the new Keanu Reeves-narrated documentary Mifune: The Last Samurai. The festival offers half a dozen of the actor’s essential collaborations with Akira Kurosawa, including Stray Dog (1949), Rashomon (1950) and Seven Samurai (1954). 1961’s Yojimbo (along with its superb 1962 sequel Sanjuro) may be Mifune’s most iconic moment of all. He plays a wandering samurai who becomes embroiled in a violent small-town dispute between warring local bosses. Famously the inspiration for the Clint Eastwood spaghetti western A Fistful of Dollars (1964), this is one of those pictures the big screen was made for.

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