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Festival coverage

Glasgow Short Film Festival

22 March – 26 March 2023

This year’s Glasgow Short Film Festival shines a spotlight on Lebanese short cinema, illuminating the country’s historical, cultural and geographical positioning across two programmes of shorts and a live performance from Beirut-based gender-defying queer dancer Khansa, a retrospective of award-winning artist duo Bárbara Wagner and Benjamin de Burca, wild world-building animations and cinematic existentialism through innovative AI collaborations and two very different journeys to Scotland undertaken for COP26.

The festival runs from 23 to 26 March.

Other years (10)

Box office and information

Latest reviews

  • Practice
    Review preview for Practice

    It's rare to see the near-naked intimacy here outwith a documentary context.

    Andrew Robertson · 4 out of 5
    A man tries to pluck up the courage to get into the dating game, but his nerves get the better of him.
  • The Möbius Trip
    Review preview for The Möbius Trip

    The small details might include the tape on the tape-deck and the tape within the tape-deck but the big loud details include a quantity of effing and geoffing that sits somewhere between Tarantino and Scotland.

    Andrew Robertson · 4.5 out of 5
    A road trip pushes a dysfunctional family to the brink after their journey descends into a claustrophobic hallucinatory nightmare. The Möbius Trip is a raw and experiential portrayal of a family unit, void of connection, confined in a car and trapped in their fated familial roles.
  • My Name Is Beth
    Review preview for My Name Is Beth

    Director Sayee Gogate and writer Alice Clarke have constructed something that shows a willingness to dig in, to dig deep, and harvest the results.

    Andrew Robertson · 4 out of 5
    Beth, a teenage girl in desperate need of a place to stay, visits her estranged grandmother in the remote Scottish countryside. To her surprise, Verity, her grandmother, mistakes Beth for a council worker.
  • Ice Merchants
    Review preview for Ice Merchants

    Hand drawn using just four colours of ink, the film’s simple lines convey a great deal of movement and expression.

    Jennie Kermode · 4 out of 5
    Every day, a father and his son jump with a parachute from their vertiginous cold house, attached to a cliff, to go to the village on the ground, far away where they sell the ice they produce daily.
  • Haulout
    Review preview for Haulout

    The documentarians choose their shots wisely, with judicious drone footage bringing home the enormity of the issue.

    Amber Wilkinson · 4 out of 5
    Documenting a marine biologist as he observes walruses in Siberia.
  • Handbook
    Review preview for Handbook

    It takes a lot to make this kind of document. The simplest line is often the hardest.

    Andrew Robertson · 4.5 out of 5
    In the days following the presidential election in Belarus in August 2020, numerous protests erupt throughout the country.
  • One Hundred Steps
    Review preview for One Hundred Steps

    There are layers of colonial consequence to these spaces, their gardens dominated by stepped approaches and the borrowed architecture of imagined pasts.

    Andrew Robertson · 3 out of 5
    The eighth audio-visual collaboration of Bárbara Wagner and Benjamin de Burca references the work of Bob Quinn, Irish filmmaker.
  • Rubber Coated Steel
    Review preview for Rubber Coated Steel

    Minimal in form, devastating in impact, echoes and repurcussions left in its wake.

    Andrew Robertson · 5 out of 5
    May 2014: two unarmed Palestinian teens are killed by Israeli soldiers on the West Bank.
  • Sunspring
    Review preview for Sunspring

    Sexuality is a particularly ambitious topic for an AI first-timer but the effect is rather charming.

    Jennie Kermode · 3 out of 5
    Relationships break down in a dystopian future in this, the first film ever written by an AI.

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