What to watch at Glasgow Film Festival 2026

A clash between the local community and the Home Office in Glasgow gets this year’s Glasgow Film Festival off to a rousing start. Festival opener Everybody to Kenmure Street is a politically charged documentary about the potency of collective action, after the citizens of one of the city’s most diverse neighbourhoods rose up to protest the deportation of two residents. Directed by Felipe Bustos Sierra and executive-produced by Emma Thompson, it raises the curtain on a festival boasting 126 films from 44 countries, including 16 world, European and international premieres, and 68 UK premieres.  

Parallel to its official selection, the festival also hosts FrightFest at GFF, a genre-focused sidebar showcasing new horror, fantasy and science-fiction cinema, as well as the annual focus on a chosen country. This years it’s Swedish cinema in the spotlight, in a strand called Take a Chance on Me. 

There are also free daily screenings as part of the Truth to Power retrospective, which features 10 classic films from the 1930s to the present day centred on characters rising against systems of power, corruption and injustice. The Audience Award competition returns too, with 10 feature films competing for the public vote. 

Here are 10 festival highlights to keep on your radar, whether you are in Glasgow or not this month. 

California Schemin’ is the directorial debut of actor James McAvoy, with a true story narrating the rise of Scottish rap duo Silibil N’ Brains, who conned the music industry by faking American identities. This homegrown biopic pulses with 2000s energy and blends comedy, music and themes of friendship and identity. 

In Couture, French director Alice Winocour creates an intimate portrait of women moving through power, ambition and vulnerability in the world of high fashion. With a highly-praised performance from Angelina Jolie, the film – which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) in 2025 – weaves together the lives of a filmmaker, a young model and a make-up artist in the lead-up to a Paris fashion show. It promises a character-driven exploration of how women shape – and are shaped by – an industry built on image. 

Co-written by and starring Charli XCX, this Warsaw-set drama is the story of a self-destructive relationship. A volcano erupts just before Rob (Will Madden) proposes to Bethany (Charli XCX), which she takes as a sign to leave her fiancé for a passionate reunion with her old friend Nel (Lena Gora).

Jim Jarmusch returns with Father Mother Sister Brother, an anthology exploring fractured family ties through three episodes themed around family members. Set variously in the US countryside, Dublin and Paris, the film touches on love, absence and kinship.  

In Live a Little, Swedish director Fanny Ovesen explores themes of desire, shame and the need to feel alive. Waking up in a stranger’s bed with no memory of what happened, Laura (Embla Ingelman-Sundberg) embarks on a journey of self-discovery. Premiered in the Nordic Competition at the Göteborg Film Festival, the film brings the voice of an emerging director to the festival in her feature debut. 

Filmed over five years, A Fox Under a Pink Moon is a remarkable collaboration between Iranian documentarian Mehrdad Oskouei and Afghan emigrant and artist Soraya, who records her own journey through exile. Soraya’s voice – tender, determined and unflinching – guides this rare first-person account of displacement. The film blends live-action documentary filmmaking with animated sequences based on Soraya’s paintings, coming together as an emotional, self-made portrait of resilience and longing. 

Co-directed by New York based Moroccan artist Meriem Bennani and Israeli filmmaker Orian Barki, Bouchra blends animation, autofiction and 3D world-building to create a portrait of queer identity and intergenerational dialogue. A hybrid self-portrait between a daughter and her mother – voiced as coyotes – the film weaves together themes of memory, family silence and the complexities of coming out.  

Nino tells the story of a young man wandering the streets of Paris after being diagnosed with cancer. The feature debut by Pauline Loquès sees Théodore Pellerin as the main actor in this story of alienation and reconnection. 

Hen is a slow-burning psychological horror from South Africa, where a devout couple’s isolation on a remote farm begins to fracture with the arrival of a mysterious boy. Director Nico Scheepers creates an atmosphere thick with dread and religious unease, filmed in stark black and white. The film has swept multiple awards at South Africa’s Silwerskerm Film Festival (including Best Director and Best Screenplay), making Scheepers a rising talent in arthouse horror.  

Gillo Pontecorvo’s 1966 classic The Battle of Algiers is a masterpiece in filmmaking on the subject of colonial resistance. With its documentary realism, it tells the story of the Algerian struggle for independence from French rule with a sense of urgency and attention to nuance. Screening as part of GFF’s Truth to Power retrospective, Pontecorvo’s film shows the people’s resistance against imperial oppression, and confronts the viewer with the tragedy of using force under violent conditions to achieve liberation.

The 22nd Glasgow Film Festival runs from 25 February to 8 March.