Glasgow Film Festival 2026: The best of the rest of the fest
Here are five other highlights from this year’s Glasgow Film Festival:
Nino
Nino (Théodore Pellerin) doesn’t think he’s going to the hospital on Friday for a cancer diagnosis, but after being blindsided by his test results, that’s how it turns out. The film follows him through the most stressful weekend of his life, as he tries to process the news, work out how to tell people, and find someone to bring with him to that first round of chemotherapy on Monday. Because the treatment will likely destroy his fertility, he also needs to bring a vial back to the hospital if he ever wants to have kids of his own.
It all seems incredibly heavy stuff, and in many ways it is, but the genius of Pauline Loquès’ debut feature is how sensitive it is, and often surprisingly funny too. The whole thing is anchored by a quietly mesmerising performance by Théodore Pellerin, who telegraphs Nino’s interiority with subtle, moving grace.
A Second Life
Shot during the 2024 Paris Olympics, A Second Life tells the story of American-German hearing-impaired woman Elisabeth (Agathe Rouselle), who works as a concierge for a fancy Parisian vacation home rental company, and is anxiously waiting to hear if her visa renewal application has been accepted. On a stressful day full of clients with problems, she bonds with free-spirited Californian Elijah (Alex Lawther), who helps her see the lighter side of life.
A Second Life adheres to the tried and true formula of Before Sunset: most of the movie simply follows Elisabeth and Elijah wandering around Paris, talking. Having the background of the Olympics certainly adds atmosphere, but it’s the off-kilter chemistry of Rouselle and Lawther that makes this film, and the kindness that radiates from every scene.
Sinsin and The Mouse
Another movie in the Before Sunset mold, although this one sees our heroes wandering around Taipei. Chizumi (Yukino Kishii) has just lost her beloved mother after a long illness. She’s invited to Taipei by her concerned friend. There she meets the handsome Shingo (Tseng Jing-hua), and the two quiet souls bond as they talk about life and loss while they walk abound the Taiwanese capital.
Although Yukino Kishii and Tseng Jing-hua share a lot of chemistry, and their journey around Taipei is both fascinating and beautifully filmed, Sinsin and The Mouse is most remarkable for its subtly profound portrayal of grief; its willingness to sit with Chizumi in her newly empty house and feel the quiet, confused ache of her loneliness is hugely moving.
OBEX
It’s 1987. Conor (Albert Birney – who also wrote and directed) lives with his beloved dog Sandy. He makes money by drawing clients using the keys on his computer and sending them the printouts. A local woman (Callie Hernandez) leaves his groceries outside. It’s a lonely life, until he starts playing mysterious new video game OBEX, and Sandy is sucked inside the world of the game. He goes right in to rescue her.
OBEX is an odd and beautiful movie; shot in black-and-white and made on a microbudget, Albert Birney crafts a world that’s both eerie and strangely sweet, vivid and sparse. Though clearly influenced by David Lynch, OBEX is still very much its own weird, wonderful thing.
Hen
Hen tells the story of, well, a hen, who narrowly escapes becoming chicken soup and flies off into an escalating series of disasters that sees her chased by a fox and carried off by a dog, who takes her to a restaurant that also happens to be a hub for human trafficking.
It sounds quite bizarre, but in fact György Pálfi’s film is remarkably cogent and deft, using its unusual premise as an effective tool for exploring matters of empathy and perspective. Perhaps most impressively of all, no CGI was used – the titular ‘hen’ is actually eight different trained birds, each of whom had their own speciality (flapping, running etc.). So as well as pulling off some pretty extreme tonal shifts, Hen is also a tremendous feat of editing!
