Glasgow Film Festival (GFF) has announced the full programme for its 22nd edition, with GFF26 running from 25 Feb until 8 Mar. The festival will host 126 films across 12 days, including 16 World, European and International premieres, 68 UK premieres, and 18 Scottish premieres, with titles from 44 countries and six continents. 

Scottish films will open and close the festival, with the UK premiere of BAFTA-winner Felipe Bustos Sierra’s documentary Everybody to Kenmure Street, kicking off GFF26 on 25 Feb.

Closing the festival on 8 Mar is the UK premiere of James McAvoy’s directorial debut, California Schemin’, based on the improbable true story of Scottish rap duo Silibil N’ Brains, aka. Gavin Bain (Séamus McLean Ross) and Billy Boyd (Samuel Bottomley).

The festival highlights early-career filmmakers, with 42 titles on the programme being a director’s first or second feature. Glasgow Film Festival 2026 (GFF26) will also showcase 50 foreign language films, with 44 languages being represented in the lineup.

The spotlight will be on Scottish cinema this year, with 13 Scottish films being showcased. A selection of established and new Scottish talent will feature on the big screen alongside opening and closing films.

Scottish films having their world premiere at GFF26 include Sailm nan Daoine (Psalms of the People), Jack Archer’s documentary about Scotland’s cultural heritage of traditional Gaelic psalm singing. The film follows Rob MacNeacail across Scotland and Ireland as he shares Gaelic language psalms with the community. Additionally, Welcome to G-Town is the debut feature from identical twin brothers Ben and Nathan McQuaid, which follows shape-shifting aliens that have landed in Glasgow. The micro-budget sci-fi is firmly Glaswegian with its sense of humour and cast. Made outside the traditional filmmaking pathways, this is the perfect film to see in a cinema with a local audience. Marc Silver’s documentary, Molly vs THE MACHINES, will also have its world premiere at the festival, with nationwide screenings also happening concurrently. The story of a heartbroken father’s quest to uncover the truth behind his daughter’s death and his fightback against how the most powerful corporations of the modern age operate, the film is distributed by Scottish production company Cosmic Cat and received significant funding from Screen Scotland.

Other Scottish films having their UK premieres include Edinburgh filmmaker Sean Dunn‘s hotly anticipated debut, The Fall of Sir Douglas Weatherford. Shot on location in Edinburgh and Balerno, and featuring Gayle Rankin, this black comedy stars Peter Mullan as a local history-fixated tour guide who descends into madness as a big-budget fantasy TV show takes over his small town. Iranian-Scottish co-production, Without Permission, by Aberdeen-based British-Iranian director Hassan Nazer, is an intelligent docufiction hybrid about an exiled filmmaker who returns to Iran to shoot a film. The feature is anchored in authentic interviews with a group of Iranian children who reveal their sweetly hopeful dreams for the future. Filmed primarily in and around Glasgow, Midwinter Break is a touching drama, based on a novel by the same name by Bernard MacLaverty, about a retired married couple who live in Glasgow (played by Lesley Manville and Ciarán Hinds), who find themselves reflecting on the past and considering their future while on an Amsterdam getaway. Partially shot in Glasgow and Perthshire, My Father’s Island spotlights the relationship between a 13-year-old (Woody Norman) and his father (played by Swann Arlaud), as they spend a year together on a remote Nordic island.

World and International Premieres

Set against the wide open landscapes of North Wales is Effi o Blaenau, a Welsh language film adaptation of Gary Owen’s much lauded and widely performed monodrama, Iphigenia in Splott. Directed by Marc Evans, the film follows Effie, a young woman who learns firsthand the personal costs of our societal shortcomings, with a tour-de-force lead performance by up-and-coming actor Leisa Gwenllian.

The festival will also showcase the world premiere of Sinsin and the Mouse, a sensitive and elegantly shot drama that accompanies a young woman, reeling from the death of her mother, on a trip to Taipei, where an encounter with a young man begins to help her break through her grief; and the international premiere of Steal Away, a psychosexual fairy tale set in an alternate reality, where a Congolese woman’s warm welcome into a grand mansion, owned by the mother of a white woman her own age, slowly reveals a far more unsettling desire beneath its surface.

UK Premieres

With 68 UK premieres at GFF26, there will be a wide array of Hollywood stars gracing Glasgow’s big screens. Angelina Jolie stars in Couture by Alice Winocour, which depicts the world of Parisian high fashion from the perspectives of the working-class women involved.

Charli XCX co-screenwrites, co-produces, and stars in Erupcja, directed by Pete Ohs, where two friends with an explosive relationship meet in Warsaw. The Dutchman, adapted from the Amiri Baraka play on identity, assimilation and racial power dynamics in America, focuses on Lula (Kate Mara), a white woman, and Clay (André Holland), a black man, riding the subway in New York City. Danny Dyer gives a stellar performance in One Last Deal, a twisting and engaging chamber piece about a football agent desperate to close a contract.

Willem Dafoe stars in two of the festival’s films, Late Fame, which follows an author of a poetry collection which gains appreciation years later among a group of young artists, and The Birthday Party, where a billionaire hosts a birthday party for his daughter on his private Greek island. Scotland-born Emma Laird stars in Satisfaction, a tense psychological drama unfolding across two time periods that charts how a young British composer’s encounter in Greece with a sympathetic new friend leads her to confront a buried traumatic event from her past.

Eddie Marsan and Éanna Hardwicke star in crime thriller No Ordinary Heist, as two bank employees who are forced to help commit a robbery to protect their families, inspired by the true story of one of the UK’s largest cash thefts. The Last Viking, an absurdist comedy revolving around a released robber’s attempts to recover his loot, will see Mads Mikkelsen star as the thief’s brother.

Foreign language films by female filmmakers take a prominent role in the programme. Franz is Agnieszka Holland’s kaleidoscopic and playful biopic depicting the career and personal trajectory of Franz Kafka. Unidentified is Haifaa Al-Mansour’s thriller about a police clerk and true-crime fan who becomes determined to solve the mystery of a murdered schoolgirl. Between Dreams and Hope, directed by Farnoosh Samadi, follows a trans man who needs his father’s permission for gender-confirming surgery as he travels with his partner back to his Iranian home village. Sundays is Alauda Ruiz de Azúa’s sensitive and balanced drama following the emotionally turbulent journey of a teenager and her family after she announces that she is considering becoming a nun.

Scottish Premieres

Many more stars of the big screen will appear in the 18 Scottish premieres at the festival.

Father Mother Sister Brother is Jim Jarmusch’s Venice Golden Lion-winning triptych of stories exploring familial relationships. The all-star cast features Adam Driver, Charlotte Rampling, Cate Blanchett, Vicky Krieps and Tom Waits. Stephen Graham and Oscar nominee Andrea Riseborough star in The Good Boy, which sees an out-of-control teenager who monetises videos of his criminal deeds online, kidnapped by a stranger who intends to force him into being a ‘good boy’ within a twisted family dynamic.

GFF favourite George MacKay returns with starring roles in two Scottish premieres. Mark Jenkin’s Rose of Nevada sees a mysterious ship reappearing after vanishing for 30 years. Two men (MacKay and Callum Turner) join its crew and net a large catch, discovering on their return that they have sailed through time. Broken English, featuring MacKay and Tilda Swinton, is a formally playful swansong documentary, following Marianne Faithfull as she looks back over her long career, sifting out fact from folklore, and featuring the bohemian rock queen’s final musical performance.

Paul Gallagher, Head of Programme at Glasgow Film Festival, said: “It is an absolute honour and privilege to unveil my first Glasgow Film Festival programme for this 22nd edition of the festival. Across these 126 features are stories of vastly differing characters, settings and ideas, but one thing connects them: they are all the result of a personal vision, uniquely brought to the screen.

“I’m particularly pleased at the depth and variety of films in this programme that were made here in Scotland or by Scottish talent; it speaks so highly of the great filmmakers we have, and the increasing opportunities they are taking and creating for themselves. I can’t wait to showcase theirs and so many other brilliant filmmakers’ work to the greatest cinema audience in the world!”

Tickets for the full programme go on sale to GFT CineCard / CineCard+ holders at 10am on Fri 23 Jan 2026, and on general public sale at 10am on Mon 26 Jan 2026