Our opening event, The Disco: A Portrait of Simon Eilbeck, will debut visual artist Alex Hetherington’s sound and image portrait of Queer d/Deaf DJ Simon Eilbeck. Formed from 16mm film and improvised compositions, The Disco encounters members of the Queer, Trans, alternative and non-binary communities who gather at Simon’s monthly disco Hot Mess.
Indonesian filmmaker Riar Rizaldi will be in attendance for two retrospective screenings, curated by Ren Scateni, and a live sound-based performance. Rizaldi has so far produced a consistent body of work that, through speculative science-fiction, explores the relationship between technology, socio-political strata, historical memory and composite belief systems. In the desert, there are only ghosts and mirages.
Minikino Presents: Indonesian Spice Route captures life’s turning points, from bustling harbours to quiet villages. These films weave stories of resilience, longing, and self-discovery, offering a glimpse into Indonesia—a Muslim-majority nation with a rich and diverse cultural heritage. Minikino Film Week is a Bali-based International Short Film Festival and GSFF25 programme partners.
Speculative Ireland, curated by Oisín Kealy, will see the IFFR award-winning film Few Can See, by filmmaker Frank Sweeney, play in Glasgow for the first time. Following this will be a special new ensemble performance by musician and Miúin label-head Neil Quigley, drawing on his latest full-length ambient release, Boglands. Sweeney will also be leading an artist workshop looking at histories of cross-border pirate radio in Ireland.
A collaboration with Palestinian collective Gaza Film Unit will see members of the collective in attendance for four short films that take us on a journey through Gaza’s past and present, reflecting on what has been lost and what must still be fought for.
Xuanlin Tham, author of Revolutionary Desires, curates a programme that explores sex as a dissolution of boundaries. Your Body, Dissolving into Me spans animation to documentary in celebrating sex and its representations, but also confronts the thorniness of what sex under systems of control and image production entails.
Spanning three programmes, Grieving Tomorrows, curated by Ren Scateni, aims to utilise grief as a methodology for investigating the structures affecting, shaping, and dictating our current lives. The strand proposes to explore three areas across three respective programmes: the environment, or the ecological crisis; acts of political resistance through mourning and embalming; and queer and trans identity.
Milda Valiulytė curates Spatial Desire, a programme inspired by the words of American writer, professor and activist Audre Lorde which invites us to conceptualise the borders that often come to define our lives. The screening will be followed by a poetry reading by Maya Uppal. Curated by Milda Valiulytė.
Welcome to the Multiverse is BACK for 2025 and Heather Bradshaw is ready to bring you the weirdest and wildest world-building that animation has to offer. The second programme in the multiverse series, ‘Dystopia Now’ uncovers an anthology of animated dystopias, holding a mirror to the flawed injustice of our own society.
Scottish Opera presents the Scottish premiere of its first-ever animated opera short, Josefine. Inspired by Franz Kafka’s last short story ‘Josefine the Singer’, directed by the Company’s resident filmmaker Antonia Bain and composed by former Emerging Artist Composer-in-Residence Samuel Bordoli, with a libretto co-authored by Antonia.
Kialy Tihngang is the recipient of the inaugural Too Happy Studios Artist Moving Image Commission. Produced by Glasgow production company Forest of Black, her film ‘Out of Office’ will premiere at GSFF.
Festival Favourites includes a selection of big hitters and darlings from 2024’s international festival circuit, and we welcome back essentials such as comedy programme For Shorts & Giggles, Family Shorts, Visible Cinema and, after a year off, our acclaimed-by-the-true-horror-freaks strand, Scared Shortless.
Last year, GSFF were proud to be able to present six of Bill Douglas’s unearthed Super 8 amateur shorts for the first time. Celebrated for his honest and innovative approach to cinematic storytelling, The Bill Douglas Award showcases new international short films that reflect these qualities.
The GSFF25 audience will have the opportunity to choose their favourites to win the International Audience Award and the Scottish Audience Award, whilst the Bill Douglas Award for International Short Film and the Scottish Short Film Award are selected by international jury. For the second year GSFF is also bringing the Scottish competition and other elements of the programme to the populations of HMP Polmont, as well as running workshops. The Young Scottish Filmmaker Prize also returns for a fourth year, with two competition categories dedicated to showcasing talented Scottish filmmakers aged 18 – 25.
All of this and more at the link below! See you in March!