Allan Hunter, co-director of the GFF, explains his choice of Meryl Streep for this year’s retrospective

‘Meryl Streep is a star who has stood the test of time, and is currently enjoying a fresh wave of popularity among the generation who've seen The Devil Wears Prada, so we thought it might be interesting to go back and let people see the spectrum of her career.

Streep is the most Oscar-nominated performer in movie history (16 times in total) but Sophie’s Choice is the film that she won her Oscar for. In many respects it’s her finest dramatic performance. Along with The French Lieutenant’s Woman, those films established a certain archetype early in her career, pitching her as a haunted, tormented, tragic figure.

One of the things that makes Streep special is her willingness to play the unsympathetic side of characters – in Kramer vs Kramer for instance. For a young actress at that stage of her career it was unusual that she was happy to play a mother who abandons her son, in a fairly selfish way, to go off and find herself. She's not too worried about developing a star image, or the kinds of characters she plays because she's always truthful to them.’

See www.glasgowfilm.org/festival for information on screenings.