GFF Perspective The Global Pulse of Glasgow

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There is an undeniable electricity to the Glasgow Film Festival. For me, it’s all about the buzz—the feeling of being surrounded by a community that genuinely lives and breathes cinema. It’s vibrant, current, and a powerful showcase of Glasgow’s footprint on the global stage. The films we choose to screen are a reflection of who we are as a city, and I am incredibly proud to be part of the team bringing that vision to life.

This year, I’m particularly excited to spotlight three South Asian titles that capture the incredible breadth of the region's storytelling. We start with Sand City, which feels like a vital, current rendition of Lost in Translation, but one where migration is not viewed through the lens of whiteness or the Global North. By centring the experience elsewhere, the film becomes much more universal, beautifully capturing the strangeness of the human condition and the unexpected connections we find in a shifting world. It pairs strikingly with Ghost School, a hauntingly beautiful fable where the young protagonist is so incredibly formidable. Her refusal to accept the supernatural explanation for her school's closure gives me hope; she reminds us that we can—and should—challenge the leaders of our societies to do better and never stop dreaming for more. Completing the trio is Shape of Momo, a gentle, intimate look at the internal conflict between what we want for ourselves as women and what society expects of us. It explores finding new ways to connect with the generations before us, allowing us to honour our heritage while building entirely new paths of fate.

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When I’m not in the screening room for my own picks, I’ll be diving into other corners of the programme to see how these themes of resistance and connection echo elsewhere. At the top of my watchlist is The Garden of Earthly Delights, a sensory journey through Manila that shares a similar atmospheric weight to Sand City. I'm also eager to catch the radical feminist futurism of Born in Flames, which feels like a spiritual sister to the defiance found in Ghost School. Finally, I can’t miss I've Seen All I Need to See, a provocative noir meditation on the "dark voids" left behind by tragedy. Together, these films represent the complicated, beautiful, and sometimes haunting realities that make GFF such a vital experience.

Neha Apsara is a Glasgow-based film programmer and artist with four years of curatorial experience centring South Asian and queer cinema. She programmed GFT’s inaugural South Asian Heritage Month season and has curated for SQIFF and Fringe of Colour Films.