Scotland’s biggest film festival, the Glasgow Film Festival (GFF) set to take place 25 February to 8 March, 2026 has unveiled its Retrospective Program, along with its Country Focus theme.
GFF26’s retrospective theme is ‘Truth to Power’, featuring 10 classics from the 1930s to the present day including Kubrick-directed satire Dr Strangelove (1964), where military blunders push the world towards nuclear annihilation, featuring comic genius Peter Sellers; Oscar-nominated civil rights epic Selma (2014) from director Ava DuVernay, which chronicles Dr Martin Luther King Jr’s 1965 marches to secure equal voting rights; and the 50th anniversary of major political thriller All the President’s Men (1976), following the journalists who famously broke the Watergate scandal, starring and produced by the late great Robert Redford.
The lineup will also include biographical drama In the Name of the Father (1993), starring Daniel Day-Lewis as an Irishman wrongfully convicted of terrorism who fights to clear his name and free his family; Steven Soderbergh’s dynamic crowd-pleaser Erin Brockovich (2000), which stars Julia Roberts in an Oscar-winning role as a law assistant fighting for justice for a small town devastated by industrial pollution; and Italian-Algerian war film The Battle of Algiers (1966), a recreation of Algeria’s 1950s battle for independence from the French government.
GFF26 will be the 22nd edition of the festival and will spotlight films from Sweden, with the Country Focus theme ‘Take a Chance on Me: Swedish Cinema’. Films include the UK premieres of political satire Eagles of the Republic about an adored Egyptian actor who takes the lead role in a major government propaganda film; horror The Home where strange events unfold after the protagonist takes his mother into a care facility for dementia; and sci-fi Egghead Republic set in an alternative reality where the Cold War didn’t end.
Other selections include the UK premiere of female-directed drama Live a Little, which follows a young woman’s exploration of her boundaries on an interrailing trip after she wakes up in a man’s bed with no memory of the night before; and the Scottish premiere of Redoubt, about a farmhand who builds a fortress in his home during the Cold War.
Paul Gallagher, Head of Program for Glasgow Film, said, “The idea for this year’s retrospective began as I reflected on the legacy and influence of the late Robert Redford. With his classic All the President’s Men serving as a starting point, ‘Truth to Power’ focuses on filmmakers who have taken on daunting targets – power, corruption and injustice – and created all-time classic films in the process; films that are not only hugely entertaining but retain sharp relevance to this day.”
The full GFF26 programme will be announced on 21 January, 2026.
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