As the Glasgow Film Festival kicks off its 22nd edition today, it marks the beginning of a new chapter for the beloved Scottish event. Longtime festival exec Paul Gallagher is heading up this year’s program after Allison Gardner stepped down last year from her role as co-director and CEO of Glasgow Film, the charity that runs the festival and the city’s indie cinema Glasgow Film Theatre, after 30 years at the organization.
“I’ve seen firsthand how Allison shaped the festival across the last few decades through the films and the kind of audience that wants to come and see them,” Gallagher tells Deadline. “It was certainly a priority for me to ensure that the audiences that come this year recognize this year’s lineup as something that fits with what has come before.”
Gallagher has been GFF for 11 years, the last six of which he has served as program manager. He didn’t officially take the reins as Head of Program until September 2025, when Gardner officially stepped down (Seonaid Daly has taken over the role of CEO). This meant that the “machinery that gets the festival running” was already in motion, he says. “This year it was really just a case of making sure we deliver a program that our loyal audiences will love.”
The festival kicks off tonight with the UK premiere of Felipe Bustos Sierra’s documentary Everybody to Kenmure Street, which chronicles the events of May 13, 2021, when Glasgow residents flocked to the city’s Kenmure Street after learning the UK Home Office was planning to deport their neighbors, sparking an impromptu grassroots movement. The film, which feels timely after recent ICE activities in the U.S., just won the World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award for Civil Resistance in Sundance. Emma Thompson is an exec producer on the film.
The festival is closing on March 8 with the UK premiere of James McAvoy’s directorial debut California Schemin’. Both the opening and closing films were shot in the Scottish city.
Of the 126 features screening at this year’s event, 10 UK premieres from first and second-time directors are set to compete for the festival’s Audience Award, the festival’s sole competitive strand. Projects include Hailey Gates’ Atropia, James J. Robinson’s First Light and Isabel Hagan’s On A String.
Supporting Scottish cinema
A big priority for Gallagher is for the festival to ensure that GFF is the main launchpad for “great, new Scottish cinema.” The selection this year, he says, is indicative of that.
While the festival is bookended with Glaswegian flavor (Bustos Sierra is based in Glasgow and McAvoy is a Glasgow native), the festival is world premiering a number of Scottish titles including Marc Silver’s documentary Molly vs the Machines.
That title follows the tragic story of British teenager Molly Russell, who was driven by social media to take her own life in 2017, and her heartbroken father’s quest to uncover the truth behind her death. The project is being released by Cosmic Cat theatrically in the UK.
“This is the kind of meaty documentary that’s touching on very relevant and current issues, and it definitely has a home at our festival,” says Gallagher. “It’s the kind of film that the wider it goes and the bigger the audience it reaches, the more impact it can have.”
Gallagher is also excited about Psalms of the People (Salim Nan Daoine), Jack Archer’s Gaelic-language documentary about Scotland’s cultural heritage of traditional Gaelic psalm singing.
“It’s a very specific cultural element of Scotland and for it to have its world premiere here in Glasgow means we can offer a platform that can give that film the boost to get further out into the world,” he says.
GFF is also screening micro-budget Welcome to G-Town, the debut feature from twin brothers Ben McQuaid and Nathan McQuaid, which focuses on shapeshifting aliens that land in Glasgow.
Strength in docs
This year, fifteen documentaries feature throughout the festival’s various strands and Gallagher says these are imperative to the lineup. “We’ve always had a solid audience for documentaries, and the documentary space has been in a relative strong place in terms of audiences in recent years,” he says. “As a film festival, it’s important we have a good representation of documentary films.”
Gallagher hired Glasgow-based film programmer Lauren Clarke, who is also a documentary programming associate at the Toronto International Film Festival. “I knew we wanted a programming voice that had a bit more expert knowledge on documentaries than myself or any of our other inhouse colleagues,” he says.
Clarke added films including Jaripeo, a queer perspective on Jaripeo, a Mexican style of rodeo, which played and Sundance and Berlin; Kamal Aljafari’s With Hasan in Gaza and Ukraine documentary Militantropos.
“She was able to bring more of these world and issues-based films, which adds a real breadth to the documentaries that we can offer,” he says.
Star power & international growth
A host of filmmaking talent are set to attend GFF this year including Die My Love and We Need To Talk About Kevin writer director Lynne Ramsay, who is set to receive the Cinema City Honorary Award at the festival. The Glasgow native will be awarded on March 6 and will also lead a special In Conversation event dubbed ‘From Page to Pulse’.
In addition to Ramsay and McAvoy (who received the Cinema City award last year), other talent in attendance this year include: French filmmaker Alice Winocour, who will be in town for the UK premiere of Couture; Polly Findlay with the UK premiere of Glasgow-set Midwinter Break; Marc Evans with the world premiere of Welsh drama Effi O Blaenau; and Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard with the Scottish premiere of their Marianne Faithfull title Broken English.
“I know how important it is to audiences and what a difference it makes to having the filmmaker and some talent in the screen as well,” says Gallagher. “It generates a real buzz.”
The majority of the lineup, he notes, are UK premieres of titles and while there is ambition to grow the festival and secure more European premieres, Gallagher says there’s a balance to be struck.
“We know we’re not Cannes and we know we’re not Venice,” he says. “We’re not at that level where everything’s going to be a world premiere – that’s not on the table for us. So, it’s important to have a selection of titles that can be the first opportunities for people in Europe and people in the UK to see these films. We also like to have a handful of world premieres. That’s the place where we are at the moment. But it’s possible for us to push this, and this is definitely something I’m keen to think about. But right now, in these 22 years the festival has been running, the emphasis has always been on the audience and that’s the most essential thing.”
He adds: “I have got my own ideas and visions for how to grow this festival and we’re definitely looking at how we can grow the festival more internationally. GFF is doing really great and we have excellent audiences and a fantastic program. But there is more we can do to unlock to the next level. What we do have is the biggest film festival in Scotland and we want to make the most of all of what that means.”
The Glasgow Film Festival runs February 25-March 8, 2026.
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