Glasgow Film Festival to share premieres with 22 other cinemas across the UK

The Glasgow Film Festival is joining forces with 22 other venues across the UK to share its premieres next year under a radical rethink of the event to ensure it goes ahead during the coronavirus pandemic.

Premieres are planned to be held at the Glasgow Film Theatre when the festival returns in February and March.

Film fans in Aberdeen, Bo'ness, Dundee, Edinburgh, Inverness, Stirling and Stornoway will get the chance to see sneak previews of some of the biggest films of 2021 as they are being screened in Glasgow.

The festival, which was launched 15 years ago, has also struck up official partnerships with the BFI Southbank, Barbican and Curzon Soho in London, Home in Manchester, the Queen’s Film Theatre in Belfast, Chapter in Cardiff and the Phoenix in Leicester.

The move to open up the festival to venues in other towns, cities and countries for the first time will see them share its opening and closing films, as well as a selection of other new films which are only being shown in cinemas.

Organisers say they also want to accommodate regular attendees at the festival who are unable to attend next year’s event.

Organisers today revealed that the 2021 curtain-raiser on 24 February will be the UK premiere of Minari, a new drama featuring The Walking Dead star Steven Yeun, which is based on the upbringing of writer and director Lee Isaac Chung. A double winner at the Sundance Film Fesival in the United States this year, it charts the experiences of an American-Korean family who move from California to a tiny farm in Arkansas.

The final will draw to a close on 7 March with the UK premiere of Spring Blossom, a new French drama by writer-director-actress Suzanne Lindon, which sees her play a teenager who develops a relationship with a man she meets outside a theatre.

The festival, which plans to host a full programme of screenings at its home at the Glasgow Film Theatre (GFT), has unveiled plans to stage a “hybrid” event which will see some films in its programme, which will be revealed in full on 14 January, available for streaming.

The move will expanded on the “Glasgow Film at Home” platform which was launched last month to showcase films that were screened at the festival earlier this year, when it attracted a total audience of more than 43,000.

However the festival said that the decision to forge partnerships with other venues would allow film fans to share the “big screen” experience of seeing new movies.

“Working in partnership with cinemas all around the UK means we can bring fantastic films and premieres to audiences across the four nations and still give that big screen experience that makes cinema so exciting.

“We’re delighted to be opening the 17th festival with Minari, a heart-warming, affecting portrait of a family set against the beautiful Arkansas countryside.

New American family drama Minari will open the 17th Glasgow Film Festival in February. Picture: Melissa Lukenbaugh

"Steven Yeun gives a powerful portrayal in Lee Isaac Chung’s autobiographical drama, with scene-stealing performances from Yuh-Jung Youn and Alan Kim as a grandmother and grandson at cultural odds.”

Chung said: “We made this film in 2019 in a very different time, hoping that the story would connect with audiences all around the world.

“Minari is a story of immigrants living in a new land while reinventing what it means to be a family. We are all immigrants now.”

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