20 years of the Glasgow Film Festival: tales of festivals past from longtime director Allison Gardner

With its spirited audiences, free retrospective showings and inspired pop-up screenings (The Warriors in a subway station, The Thing on a snowy ski slope), it’s hard to imagine the movie calendar without the Glasgow Film Festival. Running from 26 February to 9 March, it’s now the UK’s second-biggest film festival in terms of attendance, but is in fact still very young, celebrating only its 20th anniversary this year. Wes Anderson’s The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou closed the first festival in 2005.

GFF 2025 kicked off with the world premiere of Tornado from writer-director John Maclean (Slow West, 2014), a period survival thriller starring Kōki, Tim Roth, Jack Lowden and Takehiro Hira. The morning after the opening gala, I caught up with festival director and Glasgow Film CEO Allison Gardner to discuss the festival’s history. Gardner, who is retiring from her dual role at the end of 2025, has been a director of GFF for most of its existence, alongside Allan Hunter as co-director until he left that role in 2023.

You’d been programming films at Glasgow Film Theatre since the late 90s, but you weren’t in a similar role for the first edition of GFF.

For 2005 and 2006, I was not the artistic director. That was Nick Varley who ran Park Circus, and then he went off to do more Park Circus stuff. Jaki McDougall, [then] the CEO, said to me, “Well, why don’t you do it because you programme GFT so well?” It’s a big job. I said, “I will do it if I can have some help – a co-director.” [Screen International writer] Allan Hunter joined us, and the first programme Allan and I co- directed was in 2007.

How did the Glasgow Film festival first come to be?

Jaki and I had read a line in a European journal that said that cities that have film festivals have a population of people who go and see a broader range of films all year around. And we thought, that’s great, it’s an audience development initiative for GFT. That’s essentially what we thought of it.

The first couple of years were quite challenging for us to get films. I remember we had Happy-Go-Lucky [2008] as one of our opening galas and then it fell through because Berlin changed their dates and we couldn’t have it before Berlin. There was a lot of that; we were quite far down the food chain in terms of festivals. Now, we’re Scotland’s largest film festival and number two [in the UK] behind the London Film Festival. We give good audience, and I think that’s the thing that really drags distributors, sales agents etc to us.

I remember the year that I thought we’d really made it, which was when we had In the Loop [2009] as our opening gala. It was a European premiere and Armando Iannucci and all the people were there.

Has the festival’s mission statement changed over the years?

Not particularly. We did a refresh of vision, mission and values during lockdown in consultation with the board and staff. ‘Cinema For All’ has always been there, so I think that’s what Allan and I stuck to in terms of programming without prejudice. So, for example, when films had already played at LFF, if we wanted them, thought they were good and that our audiences would like them, we would just take them and say it’s the Scottish premiere. [whispers] Most audiences don’t care.

It’s nice to have world premieres because it brings the press and so a smattering of those is really important, but it’s not the be all and end all. You’re looking for just great films.

Who have been some of your favourite guests over the years?

Alan Rickman was lovely. Richard Gere, Lynne Ramsay… Tim Roth was really nice last night. Gemma Arterton, she was so lovely. She came a couple of times. She was here for Byzantium [2012], as was Saoirse Ronan. And then she was here [in 2018] for The Escape , which was the Beast from the East year. She was up towards the end and we were like, “Oh my God, a guest who actually got here, how amazing!”

Any memorably strange guest appearances?

The year we had The Raid [2011], Iko Uwais came and he was doing backflips and everything. And I was like, “Oh my dear God, don’t go through the screen!”

Do you have any really positive memories of specific screenings?

I really enjoyed the secret location screenings that we did. We told people what the film was but not where they were. For Con Air [1997], we bussed people out to an aircraft hangar. The Blair Witch Project [1999] we did out in Mugdock Country Park. And when we did The Lost Boys [1987], we took them to M&D’s Theme Park.

The very first GFF surprise film in 2007 was Inland Empire. Others since have included Promising Young Woman (2020), The Voices (2014) and Calvary (2014). Have any audience reactions to the sometimes very bold choices stuck with you?

My finance/commercial director David Gattens was at Spring Breakers [2012] and when we threw beach balls around the room during the introduction, he said one knocked his pint over. He had to watch it sober and he’s never forgiven me. It was not his tempo. And during the opening credits of Love & Friendship [2016], somebody shouted, “Oh, for fuck’s sake!”

With 13 Assassins [2010], someone came out quite far in, about 50 minutes, and asked for their money back because they didn’t like it. Well, don’t come to a surprise film if you don’t expect to be surprised. If you’re not prepared to take a chance, then don’t buy a ticket to a surprise film. Genuinely, please don’t.

Finally, any hot tips for this year’s programme?

There’s a couple of really great African films: Zero and I Do Not Come to You by Chance. Bob Trevino Likes It – I’m a sucker for an American indie. The Kazakhstan film Crickets, It’s Your Turn, which is up for the audience award. I really like Mistress Dispeller, a documentary that’s also part of the audience award. There’s a real broad range for that. The audience award is like the Oscars this year, there’s no obvious front runner.