First events announced for Glasgow Film Festival's 20th anniversary in 2024

The first major events and screenings for Glasgow Film Festival’s 20th anniversary have been announced.

The annual film festival takes place at venues across the city from February 28 until March 10 2024 and will see special events return with two films celebrating two landmark years in Glasgow Film’s history.

In 1939 the Cosmo cinema, now the Glasgow Film Theatre (GFT), opened and to mark 85 years of one of the city’s cultural gems, movie fans can click their ruby red slippers together three times to be transported to a magical screening of Victor Fleming’s 1939 technicolour masterpiece The Wizard of Oz.

Glasgow Film Festival (GFF) will also host a tribute screening to auteur John Waters magnum opus Female Trouble which celebrates its 50th anniversary along with Glasgow Film Theatre which was first established in 1974.

GFF’s free morning retrospective returns for 2024 with Our Story So Far, a journey through time with ten classic titles from each anniversary in Glasgow Film’s history.

Retrospectives scheduled to screen from this year are Mr Smith Goes to Washington, Ninotchka, Only Angels Have Wings and Wuthering Heights.

The festival offers a rare opportunity to see a back catalogue from 1974 including The Godfather Part II, Young Frankenstein and Foxy Brown.

To celebrate the inaugural edition of the festival in 2005, the festival will screen Brick, Walk the Line, and Wolf Creek.

Each year the festival shines a light on global cinema, exploring contemporary and re-discovered film and

This year the festival’s country of focus is Czechia (also known as Czech Republic).

Czech, please! includes titles such as Daisies, a radical feminist film from Věra Chytilová once banned for its stance on communism and patriarchy.

Is There Any Place For Me, Please?, a debut feature documentary and UK premiere from Jarmila Štuková, showcases a portrayal of one woman navigating life after an acid attack. Other premieres include dystopian sci-fi Restore Point and chilling crime thriller Mr and Mrs Stodola.

Timely period drama We Have Never Been Modern will inspect gender politics, martial constraints and self-identity.

Brothers, Czechia’s official submission to the 2024 Academy Awards for the Best International Film, examines liberation and resilience in a story focused on an anti-Communist resistance group.

Allison Gardner, CEO of Glasgow Film and Director of GFF since 2007, will programme GFF24 alongside a group of exciting emerging voices in the Scottish film festival scene including Christopher Kumar, Tomiwa Folorunso, Natasha Thembiso Ruwona, Heather Bradshaw and Rosie Beattie. 

She said: “I am overjoyed to select titles for the 20th edition of the festival alongside a group of programmers with such vibrant and innovative ideas. Each programmer has been able to make their unique stamp on the upcoming festival through our popular special events, famous retrospectives and rich Czech titles.”

Tickets for the special events go on sale on Wednesday December 13 at 1pm from the Glasgow Film Festival website.

This year’s festival’s 2024 Audience Award is sponsored by Mubi and is the only award handed out at the festival, given to an outstanding feature film by a first or second time director.

The award is chosen by GFF audiences and the shortlist will be announced with the full programme on Wednesday January 24 with tickets going on sale on Monday January 29.