Proxima
Glasgow Film Festival (GFF) 2020 has announced its Opening and Closing Gala films for the 16th annual festival, which will open on 26 February 2020 with the UK premiere of Proxima, the latest drama from award-winning director Alice Winocour.
Proxima sees Eva Green give one of her most powerful performances in a heartfelt portrait of a woman torn between professional ambition and the demands of motherhood.
Astronaut Sarah Loreau (Green) is undertaking the gruelling mental and physical training required for a one-year mission aboard the International Space Station. She is the only mother in a diverse international crew. Her colleagues, including American NASA veteran Mike (Matt Dillon), are focused on the job and seemingly untroubled by their family responsibilities. Separated from her husband, Sarah tends to the needs of her sensitive seven-year-old daughter, Stella (Zelie Boulant-Lemesle), who is struggling with the long separation that lies ahead. The pressures intensify as Sarah finds herself facing some impossible choices.
Meticulously observed, Proxima offers a tender portrait of a mother-daughter relationship against a backdrop of unimaginable scope.
How to Build a Girl
The 2020 Glasgow Film Festival will close on Sunday 8 March 2020 with the UK premiere of How to Build a Girl, the big screen version of Caitlin Moran’s semi-autobiographical bestselling novel.
Beanie Feldstein (Booksmart) shines as Johanna Morrigan, a 16-year-old extrovert from the outskirts of Wolverhampton with raging hormones, an unstoppable imagination and gigantic dreams. Her bedroom is adorned with posters of her heroes such as Jo March, Cleopatra, Sylvia Plath and others, who come to life and provide the closest thing to friendship that she has. Yearning to make a name for herself, she answers an ad seeking “hip young gunslinger” journalists for a cool London music magazine. She is accepted, reinvents herself as Queen of Mean rock critic Dolly Wilde and heads to the big city. But as her critical savagery brings her greater and greater success, the lines between Johanna Morrigan and Dolly Wilde begin to haze. She has certainly figured out how to build a girl but is this the girl that she wanted to be?
Coky Giedroyc (Stella Does Tricks, Harlots) directs a cast including Paddy Considine, Alfie Allen, Chris O’Dowd, Emma Thompson, Sarah Solemani, Frank Dilane, Laurie Kynaston and Arinze Kene.
Tickets for Opening and Closing Galas go on sale at 12 noon on Monday 13 January 2020 from glasgowfilm.org/festival and GFT Box Office (0141 332 6535).
The full programme for Glasgow Film Festival 2020 will be announced on 29 January 2020.
