Glasgow Film Festival to open with UK premiere of Your Sister's Sister

Lynn Shelton’s Your Sister’s Sister, starring Emily Blunt and Rosemarie DeWitt, will open this year’s Glasgow Film Festival (GFF) on Feb 16.

Your Sister’s Sister is one of a record number of UK and European premieres at the festival, including UK premieres for romantic comedy The Decoy Bride, the eagerly anticipated Irvine Welsh’s Ecstasy and documentary How To Die In Oregon, about physician-assisted suicide.

Aki Kaurismäki’s award-winning Le Havre will close the festival on Feb 26.

“I think the superb quality and international credentials of the opening and closing galas reflect the very special programme of films and events that we have put together for the 2012 Festival,” said Glasgow Film Festival Co-director Allison Gardner.

Bertrand Tavernier, Dexter Fletcher and Irvine Welsh are among the guests confirmed to attend this year’s festival.

Returning for the seventh year, FrightFest will take place during the festival’s closing weekend (Feb 24-25), featuring ten UK premieres including sci-fi chiller L’arrivo De Wang and Gareth Evans’ critically acclaimed actioner The Raid.

Other threads in this year’s festival include the return of last year’s Superheroes in Glasgow, now in the guise of Kapow!@GFF, dedicated to all things comic and superhero, and the Glasgow Music and Film Festival featuring documentaries, such as The Other F Word about punk rockers who have become dads, and live performances from US art rockers High Places and Umberto who will be performing a live soundtrack to a secret film.

Developed in partnership with the Goethe Institut, Welcome To Germany will be 2012’s country focus which will include screenings of Berlin prize-winner Sleeping Sickness (Schlafkrankheit) and Maggie Peren’s Colour of the Ocean (Die Farbe des Ozean). There will also be a weekend of entertainment, inspired by the cabaret movement of Weimar Germany, entitled Weimarvellous.

Scottish work in the festival programme comes from the likes of the world premiere of No One But Me, a documentary of jazz singer Annie Ross, and a screening of Alexander Mackendrick’s comedy The Maggie in the unique surroundings of The Tall Ship on the River Clyde.

As previously announced, the festival will also feature a Gene Kelly retrospective to mark the centenary of his birth including screenings of On The Town and Singin’ In The Rain, as well as the opportunity for audiences to join in with the Gene Kelly Ceilidh.