February at Glasgow Film Theatre: cinephilia, resistance and radical romance
Glasgow Film Theatre has unveiled its February 2026 programme, and it reads like a love letter to cinema as memory, rebellion and collective experience. Across seasons, festivals and special events, GFT’s February slate balances canonical auteurs with queer histories, political filmmaking and expansive access provision, reinforcing its role as one of the UK’s most vital independent cinemas.
At the heart of the month is the continuation of CineMasters: Jean-Luc Godard. The season extends into February with further opportunities to experience Breathless on the big screen, restored in crisp 4K. Godard’s restless formalism and cultural disruption feel particularly resonant now, coinciding with the release of Richard Linklater’s Nouvelle Vague, a dramatisation of the making of Breathless that offers a contemporary reflection on the mythology of the French New Wave.
February also marks the tenth anniversary of Fokus: Films from Germany, returning to GFT with a specially curated programme titled Women: Words and Worlds. Drawing from the Goethe-Institut catalogue and spanning a century of German cinema, the selection revisits key historical moments through women’s shifting roles, voices and lived experiences. The screenings are curated by Rastko Novaković and offer both retrospection and renewed urgency.
GFT’s long-running Coen Brothers of the Month season continues on Monday 16 February with Barton Fink, introduced by film critic and writer Hannah McGill. The film’s claustrophobic satire of creativity under capitalism feels sharply aligned with the theatre’s broader curatorial interests.
Queer Cinema Sundays returns with Lesvia, a documentary by Tzeli Hadzidimitriou chronicling over four decades of lesbian life and tension on the Greek island of Lesvos. The film traces the complicated coexistence between local residents and the lesbians who arrived seeking freedom, love and community, offering a layered portrait of belonging and conflict.
LGBT History Month is marked with a special screening of Chocolate Babies, Stephen Winter’s frenetic and long overlooked debut. Emerging from the New Queer Cinema movement of the 1990s, the film follows a group of radical queer HIV-positive activists, addicts and drag queens navigating resistance, pleasure and survival in the face of political hostility and institutional neglect during the AIDS crisis.
For Valentine’s Day, GFT turns away from convention, pairing two films that explore love as disruption rather than comfort. Harold and Maude tells the story of an unlikely connection between a morbid teenager and a woman sixty years his senior, while The Way We Were places a turbulent romance against the political tensions of the Second World War and McCarthyism.
Sound and Vision continues with a Silents Synced event that reimagines Buster Keaton’s Sherlock Jr through the music of R.E.M. Pairing the 1924 comedy with Monster and New Adventures in Hi-Fi, the screening offers a collision of eras that reasserts cinema as a living, evolving form.
Alongside its seasons and special events, February brings a strong line-up of new releases and re-releases, many tipped for BAFTA and Academy Awards attention. These include Linklater’s Nouvelle Vague, international contenders The Secret Agent and Sirât, animation Little Amélie, and Rose Byrne’s performance in If I Had Legs I’d Kick You. There are also further chances to catch Marty Supreme and Hamnet, while Claire Foy stars in the adaptation of H is for Hawk and Akinola Davies Jr makes his feature debut with My Father’s Shadow.
Elsewhere, the programme ranges from Kristen Stewart’s directorial debut The Chronology of Water to Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights, Bradley Cooper’s Is This Thing On? and dark comedy Twinless. World cinema features prominently with Iraqi drama The President’s Cake and All That’s Left of You, an epic family story set in 1980s Palestine.
Access remains central to GFT’s programming, something important to our publication. February sees the return of Access Film Club, delivered in partnership with the National Autistic Society Scotland, with a screening of Pretty in Pink in a relaxed and welcoming environment. Visible Cinema offers a fully Deaf-accessible screening of The Chronology of Water with descriptive subtitles, live captioning and BSL interpretation. Movie Memories celebrates Valentine’s Day with The Way We Were, creating a dementia-friendly cinema experience complete with refreshments and live music.
Tickets for the February programme are on sale now via glasgowfilm.org and the GFT Box Office.
Glasgow Film Theatre
12 Rose Street, Glasgow, G3 6RB
https://www.facebook.com/glasgowfilm
https://www.instagram.com/glasgowfilmtheatre
https://www.tiktok.com/@glasgowfilmtheatre