There are a few notable exceptions like The End , a curious-sounding apocalyptic musical from Joshua Oppenheimer starring Tilda Swinton, George MacKay and Michael Shannon, or world premiere Tornado , the hugely anticipated new film from Scottish director John Maclean Slow West , which is opening the festival and should kick it off with a mighty wallop.
I've gone digging around the rest of the programme and here are ten of the most promising-looking titles that have caught my eye. Australian film director Samuel Van Grinsven impressed with his sexy and deeply atmospheric debut Sequin in a Blue Room , which mixed queer desire with a nail-biting techno-thriller plot. This follow-up, a poetic ghost story centred on the relationship that forms between a grieving woman and her dead wife's estranged son, looks similarly intriguing.
This debut from Austrian filmmaker Bernhard Wenger got rave reviews when it premiered at last year's Venice Film Festival. I love the sound of this Ukrainian sci-fi about a space trucker taking a shipment of waste to Jupiter accompanied by his joke-telling robot. All is going well until he learns that the Earth exploded while he was on the job, leaving him possibly the only person alive in the solar system. Existential hijinks ensue. This darkly humorous bout of psychological warfare is reportedly a hoot.
It centres on a grumpy labourer with a hot temper and a family in turmoil, who finds a surprising creative outlet when he joins an amateur dramatics group putting on Romeo and Juliet. GFF can always be relied upon for great retrospectives, so be sure to make some time in your schedule for the strand dedicated to the films of Swedish-born actor and director Mai Zetterling.
The Girls , Zetterling's fierce, playful and often surreal feminist fable starring three legendary Swedish actresses Bibi Andersson, Harriet Andersson and Gunnel Lindblom is a great place to start.
