Top film seasons in Glasgow and Edinburgh this winter
From Park Chan-Wook to Lynne Ramsay, there are plenty of reasons to warm up near a silver screen during the cold snap
T’is the season to hide in the cinema, and there’s plenty to watch besides January's pedestrian Oscar-bait fare. Local and arthouse cinemas are providing ample opportunity to catch up on classics from Hollywood and the wider world. Here are some picks that caught our eye.
Filmhouse
Park Chan-Wook
Establishing the reputation of South Korea as a powerhouse of intellectually supple genre cinema, there’s little beating the subversive glee of Wook's best works, particularly his Vengeance trilogy from the 2000s (Sympathy For Mr Vengeance, Oldboy and Lady Vengeance), which hold an immense weight without sacrificing their popcorn propulsion. As well as Oldboy, Filmhouse’s Park Chan-Wook season will screen his debut Joint Security Area, his erotic thriller The Handmaiden, one of his few American productions Stoker, his Hitchcockian Decision To Leave (pictured above), and his brand-new crime thriller No Other Choice.
Filmhouse, Edinburgh, Friday 23 January–Thursday 5 February.
Glasgow Film Theatre
Cinemasters: Jean-Luc Godard
The intelligentsia’s director of choice is being given the Cinemasters treatment from GFT, which will screen films from his imperial phase as part of the French New Wave and his more recent, uncompromising work which combined experimental collage with a gnomic approach to narrative. Included in the mix is Breathless, Une Femme Est Une Femme, Le Mépris, Vivre Sa Vie, Bande à Part, Pierrot Le Fou, Goodbye To Language, and The Image Book.
Glasgow Film Theatre, Glasgow, Wednesday 7 January–Monday 23 February.
Cameo
Rediscover
Cameo’s long-running Rediscover series has been the cinema’s way of bringing a grab-bag of classics to screens, from the fields of film noir, Oscar-winning drama or curious surrealism. This month, films include Barbara Stanwyck’s sexually liberated Baby Face, gothic chiller The Black Cat and Marlene Dietrich’s seductive Blonde Venus.
Cameo, Edinburgh, Sunday 11–Sunday 25 January.
Grosvenor Cinema
Cult Classics
Grosvenor Cinema isn’t shying away from the January blues this year, with three gloomy Scottish masterpieces showing as part of its Cult Classics season, which takes place every Thursday at 8.30pm. First up is Peter Mullan’s near-dystopian black comedy Orphans (Thursday 8 January), a long-night-of-the soul odyssey through Glasgow. Next, Lynne Ramsay’s coming-of-age drama Ratcatcher (Thursday 15 January), which will probably gain some additional traction for anyone discovering her for the first time after the success of 2025's Die My Love. Finally, Breaking The Waves (Thursday 22 January) shows Lars Von Trier at his most complex, following a young woman’s emotional turbulence after her paralysed husband urges her to have sex with other men.