What's On In Scotland: Three things to do tonight

CINEMA: HARD TO BE A GOD

Hard To Be A God is a visionary, one-of-a-kind film set in a brutal medieval landscape and rendered in bleak, monochromatic shades. It’s an unlikely palette even for a science fiction film, but Aleksei German’s last creation – he died in 2013 – is resolutely improbable. Based on a 1964 novel written by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, Roadside Picnic – which then gave rise to Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker – Hard To Be A God imagines a parallel world, “about 800 years behind [Earth],” whose inhabitants come to revere Rumata, an observer/scientist sent from Earth and treated like a God by the bewildered peasants, with whom Rumata is ordered not to interfere. Released in 2013 to rave reviews, Hard To Be A God is one of the most unique – and brutal – sci fi films you’re likely to see.

DCA, 152 Nethergate, Dundee, 8.30pm, £7.20

MUSIC: YORKSTON/THORNE/KHAN AND LISA O’NEILL

James Yorkston, Jon Thorne and Suhail Yusuf Khan, a recently assembled supergroup of sorts with a new album already under their belts, ply their mesmeric fusions of folk, jazz and traditional Hindustani music at Celtic Connections. Bridging a rarely-explored gap between Indian and Scottish music, Yorkston/Thorne/Khan are better placed than most to articulate the festival’s remit of connecting Celtic music to parallel forms elsewhere in the world. The Scotsman’s Fiona Shepherd, writing about Everything Sacred, called it a “meditative and melancholy album.” Augmenting that mood will be Irish musician Lisa O’Neill, who collaborated on Yorkston/Thorne/Khan’s album on Little Black Buzzer.

Tron Theatre, 63 Trongate, Glasgow, £14

THEATRE: THE WEIR

Conor MacPherson’s The Weir is Scotland’s first major theatre production of the year, and it comes courtesy of the Lyceum. Set in a rural Irish pub, The Weir is a rich tale of barfly anecdotes, idiosyncratic characters, ghost stories, and the pathos of pub culture, which, on the one hand, brings people together, and, on the other, also suggests an unseen loneliness. The five characters at the centre of the play – Jack, Jim, Finbarr, and Valerie, plus the pub landlord – trade easy banter within a riveting story that Joyce McMillan, writing in the Scotsman, called a “contemporary classic.” Amanda Gaughan directs.

Royal Lyceum, Grindlay Street, Edinburgh, £15-£29.50