Glasgow Film Festival (GFF) 2020 has announced its Opening and Closing Gala films.
The 16th annual festival will open on 26 February with the UK premiere of Proxima - the latest drama from award-winning Alice Winocour, director of Augustine and Disorder. Eva Green (Casino Royale, Penny Dreadful) gives one of her most powerful performances in a heartfelt portrait of a woman torn between professional ambition and the demands of motherhood. Astronaut Sarah Loreau (Green) is undertaking the gruelling mental and physical training required for a one-year mission aboard the International Space Station.
She is the only mother in a diverse international crew. Her colleagues, including American NASA veteran Mike (Matt Dillon), are focused on the job and seemingly untroubled by their family responsibilities. Separated from her husband, Sarah tends to the needs of her sensitive seven-year-old daughter, Stella (Zelie Boulant-Lemesle), who is struggling with the long separation that lies ahead. The pressures intensify as Sarah finds herself facing some impossible choices. Meticulously observed, Proxima offers a tender portrait of a mother-daughter relationship against a backdrop of unimaginable scope.
We are thrilled to conclude the 2020 Glasgow Film Festival with the UK premiere of How to Build a Girl on Sunday 8 March. The big screen version of Caitlin Moran's cherished, semi-autobiographical bestseller is a hilarious, inspirational coming-of-age comedy that is set to be the homegrown crowd-pleaser of the year. Beanie Feldstein (Booksmart) shines as Johanna Morrigan, a 16-year-old extrovert from the outskirts of Wolverhampton with raging hormones, an unstoppable imagination and gigantic dreams. Her bedroom is adorned with posters of her heroes such as Jo March, Cleopatra, Sylvia Plath and others, who come to life and provide the closest thing to friendship that she has. Yearning to make a name for herself, she answers an ad seeking "hip young gunslinger" journalists for a cool London music magazine. She is accepted, reinvents herself as Queen of Mean rock critic Dolly Wilde and heads to the big city.
But as her critical savagery brings her greater and greater success, the lines between Johanna Morrigan and Dolly Wilde begin to haze. She has certainly figured out how to build a girl but is this the girl that she wanted to be? Penned by Moran with her trademark humour, Coky Giedroyc (Stella Does Tricks, Harlots) directs a wise and witty delight with a terrific cast that includes Paddy Considine, Alfie Allen, Chris O'Dowd, Emma Thompson, Sarah Solemani, Frank Dilane, Laurie Kynaston and Arinze Kene plus fantastical cameos from Sharon Horgan, Lily Allen, Jameela Jamil, Lucy Punch, Alexei Sayle, Michael Sheen, Sue Perkins, Mel Giedroyc and Gemma Arterton.
