22 May 2025
Glasgow’s original independent cinema, Glasgow Film Theatre (GFT), has announced its early summer programme. Highlights include seasons celebrating the renowned filmmakers Michael Haneke and Michael Mann; programmes from UK Green Film Festival, Refugee Festival Scotland and SAFAR Film Festival; and a special preview screening of the hotly anticipated post-apocalyptic horror movie 28 Years Later.
Seasons and Festivals
GFT’s popular CineMasters programme celebrates directors and key figures from filmmaking history. It returns in June with two seasons devoted to the work of filmmakers Michael Haneke and Michael Mann.
Throughout his extraordinary career, Austrian director Michael Haneke has consistently provoked with questions of bourgeois complacency, alienation and disconnect. He has developed a style that articulately fuses social critique with a cinema of transcendent beauty in its precision, purpose and humanity. GFT will show five of Haneke’s finest films, including screenings of The Piano Teacher and The White Ribbon in 35mm, along with Funny Games, Code Unknown and Hidden.
Four-time Academy Award nominee Michael Mann is renowned for his propulsive, adrenaline fuelled filmmaking. As his cops and robbers magnum opus Heat marks its 30th anniversary, GFT will take the opportunity to showcase a selection of this modern master's greatest cinematic creations, including Manhunter, The Insider, Collateral and Miami Vice.
GFT will also play host to several of the UK’s leading festivals in June. Refugee Festival Scotland will present three Pay What You Can screenings from 16 – 19 June. These will include a selection of short films from the Building Solidarity & Kinship programme curated by Esraa Husain and delivered in partnership with SQIFF. The screening will be followed by a panel discussion with directors Aderayo Adenekan and Theo Panagopoulos in addition to local creatives and community organisers in Glasgow who come from migrant backgrounds.
Central and West integration Network (CWIN) will take over GFT’s monthly Glasgow Film Club with a special screening of Winners as part of Refugee Festival Scotland, and Garnethill Multicultural Centre will screen a short film they have made with Tricky Hat Productions as part of the Listening To Our City project – an ongoing Glasgow-based project involving people who have experience of the asylum seeking and refugee process. Members of Garenthill Multicultural Centre’s Conversation Café have selected Children of Heaven to screen alongside the short.
SAFAR Film Festival, the UK’s largest Arab film festival, will present five special screenings at GFT from 19 – 27 June, including Seeking Haven for Mr Rambo, Red Path, Watch Out For Zou Zou, A State of Passion and Sudan, Remember Us. The UK Green Film Festival will return to GFT from 29 June – 2 July with special screenings of Searching for Amani and As the Tide Comes In.
GFT and Women of Colour Scotland will also present a special screening on Saturday 28 June as part of the Windrush Caribbean Film Festival showcasing four powerful short films that explore identity, resilience, memory and heritage through the eyes of Caribbean women.
Q&As and Special Screenings
GFT will welcome several special guests for Q&A screenings in June, including director Toby Trackman with The Last Musician of Auschwitz, director Aura Satz with Preemptive Listening, writer/director Daisy-May Hudson with Lollipop, and Turner Prize-winning artist Martin Creed, who will present his Work in Progress at GFT on Monday 9 June.
GFT’s monthly Queer Cinema Sundays screening for June will be Park Chan-wook’s The Handmaiden, selected and introduced by Xuanlin Tham, author of Revolutionary Desires: The Political Power of the Sex Scene. Tham will participate in a Q&A after the screening to discuss their new book.
Author and screenwriter Bernard MacLaverty will visit the cinema to introduce a special screening of Cal on Friday 13 June, sharing his memories of adapting the film from his novel and working with Director Pat O’Connor and Producer David Puttnam.
On Thursday 12 June, GFT will present a special screening of David Mackenzie’s slow-burn erotic noir Young Adam, adapted from Alexander Trocchi’s 1954 novel, on 35mm. The screening will mark the launch of events to mark the centenary of the ‘Scottish Beat’ Alexander Trocchi’s birth. Alexander Trocchi at 100: A Symposium will be held at the University of Glasgow the following day on 13 June, hosted by Scottish Literature and the Andrew Hook Centre for American Studies.
New Releases and Re-releases
One of the most anticipated new releases of 2025, Danny Boyle’s 28 Years Later arrives in cinemas on Friday 20 June. GFT will give Glasgow film fans a chance to see the third film in the post-apocalyptic horror series before anyone else, with a special preview screening on Thursday 19 June.
Other new releases arriving at GFT in June will include The Ballad of Wallis Island, The Salt Path, Tummy Monster, April, The Encampments, Along Came Love, Bogancloch, Tornado, Lollipop, Jane Austen Wrecked My Life, S/He Is Still Her/E - The Official Genesis P-Orridge Documentary, The Last Journey and Sudan, Remember Us.
Much-loved classics re-released in June will include 60th Anniversary screenings of Darling, 50th Anniversary screenings of Dog Day Afternoon and 30th Anniversary screenings of Clueless.
Accessible Screenings
In addition to an extensive programme of captioned and audio described screenings, GFT has announced the June editions of its long-running accessible film events.
Access Film Club, delivered in partnership with the National Autistic Society Scotland, includes a film screening and post-film chat in a friendly and welcoming environment. For the June event, GFT will screen Mary and Max — the debut animation from Memoir of a Snail director Adam Elliot, with tickets available for just £6.90.
Visible Cinema, GFT’s monthly Deaf-friendly film event, will host a showcase of student films from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland’s groundbreaking BA Performance in BSL and English course, featuring four short films written, directed by and featuring BA Performance final year students, created in collaboration with the BA Filmmaking course. There will be full access for Deaf, deafened and hard of hearing cinema-goers at this screening. The film will have descriptive subtitles, and the introduction and discussion will have Live Captioning and BSL interpretation. Tickets are available for £6.90.
Movie Memories, GFT’s dementia-friendly film event, will screen Vincente Minnelli’s much-loved 1950 classic Father of the Bride. Designed to enable people living with dementia to socialise in a safe and welcoming environment, tickets for Movie Memories cost £3 and include free refreshments and live music.
Tickets for GFT’s June programme are on sale now from glasgowfilm.org and the GFT Box Office.
GFT is operated by Glasgow Film, an educational charity which also runs the award-winning Glasgow Film Festival and Glasgow Youth Film Festival, and is the lead organisation for Film Hub Scotland. GFT is the city’s original independent arthouse cinema and the home of film in Glasgow. Glasgow Film is funded by Creative Scotland, Screen Scotland and Glasgow City Council.
