Glasgow Short Film Festival competition line-up announced for 2021 virtual event

• Megan Merino
• 23 February 2021

12th Man

The festival will also celebrate the Bill Douglas Award's tenth anniversary with a retrospective programme and new interviews

Glasgow Short Film Festival's selection of competition films has been announced, with the line-up including seven world premieres, 14 UK premieres and two European premieres.

Scotland's largest short film festival will be returning as an entirely virtual event for the second year running, with selected films being presented on the festival hub from 22–28 March 2021.

The selections have been made for GSFF's two annual competitions: the Scottish Short Film Award, which honours inspiration and innovation in new Scottish cinema; and the Bill Douglas Award for International Short Film, now in its tenth year, which showcases new cinema from around the world.

Huntsville

Highlights from the international listings that are making their UK premiere include Huntsville Station by Chris Filippone and Jamie Meltzer, Letter to My Mother by Amina Maher, and Ismael Joffroy Chandoutis' Maalbeek. Notable Scottish films include Caitlin Black's 12th Man, Adura Onashile's Expensive Shit and Laura Wadha's Isle of Us.

The GSFF21 audience will also have the opportunity to choose their favourites to win the Scottish and International Audience Awards, the winners of which will be commissioned to create the 2022 festival trailer. The 2021 festival trailer, created by last year's winning director James Price, stars Glasgow comedy legend Jonathan Watson.

To celebrate ten years of the Bill Douglas Award for International Short Film, the previous nine winning films will be revisited in this year's programme, alongside new interviews between each filmmaker and a member of the jury that selected their film. These interviews will be available to listen to on Glasgow Short Film Festival's brand new podcast available from March.

Isle of Us

Sanne Jehoul, GSFF Co-director, said, 'A benefit of running GSFF online for a second year is that this time around, we have been able to let our programme respond to both the virtual context as well as the wider conversations and collective needs that have come into focus over this pandemic.'

'That has led to a programme which offers audiences more flexibility and complementary elements, such as our podcast episodes which provide additional context for and engagement with our programme and the filmmakers we've championed in the past, as well as live group Q&As with our Scottish competition filmmakers. We are excited to soon share our full programme and its reflections on the year gone by.'

Further programme announcements for GSFF21 will be made on Wednesday 10 March.

Glasgow Short Film Festival runs from Mon 22– Sun 28 March. Visit glasgowshort.org for further information.