DESPITE feeling the effects of the extreme weather in Scotland this week, Glasgow's film festival has recorded a record year.
Admissions to the festival for the first seven days of the Glasgow Film Festival are up 9% on last year, organisers said.
The festival's opening weekend saw Karen Gillan, David Tennant, Lynne Ramsay and Imogen Poots on the festival's red carpet.
On Saturday 24 February, Glasgow Film Theatre (GFT) registered 2,276 admissions, a new single day record for the venue.
Despite one afternoon and evening of cancellations due to the snow, the festival continued to the weekend.
Allison Gardner, the Glasgow Film Festival Co-director said: "We have had the most wonderful time at GFF18, from our stunning stop animation Opening with the UK Premiere of Wes Anderson’s Isle of Dogs through to our closing weekend featuring two World Premieres of Scottish films - Super November and Nae Pasaran.
"Despite the best efforts of the Beast from the East, our fantastic team here pulled together and achieved the herculean task of ‘the show must go on’. Before the storm GFF18 was 9% ahead of GFF17".
The festival closed with the World Premiere of Felipe Bustos Sierra’s documentary Nae Pasaran.
The Scottish-made feature tells the story of the East Kilbride factory workers who defied the Chilean dictatorship, by grounding half of General Pinochet’s air-force in the 1970s.
Bob Fulton, Stuart Barrie, John Keenan and Robert Somerville, from the factory, were in attendance at the World Premiere along with the director.
At the closing gala, Xavier Legrand’s Custody was named the winner of the GFF18 Audience Award – voted for by GFF audiences out of a shortlist of ten festival films by first and second-time directors.
The dates for Glasgow Film Festival 2019 have been confirmed as Wednesday 20 February to Sunday 3 March.
Mr Legrand said: "It is a great honour to win this award and my thanks go to the festival and its wonderful audiences for it.
"The festival has a great spirit and sense of community especially in the face of this week's weather events and myself and the film's star Denis Menochet hope to revisit again in the coming years, with or without the snow."
David Tennant, who attended Glasgow Film Festival 2018 with the European Premiere of You, Me and Him said: "I am so pleased and proud that we got to premiere You, Me and Him at the GFF.
"In the GFT, possibly my favourite cinema in the world.
"The Glasgow audience is so engaged and enthusiastic and discerning, it’s the perfect place to celebrate all that is exciting about British film."
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