The Glasgow Short Film Festival – which runs between February 13 - 16 as a sub-festival of the Glasgow Film Festival – has announced its international competition with a diverse range of films that reflects the GSFF’s more experimental and abstract approach to the short film form.

Highlights will include the Finnish experimental documentary Emergency Calls (Hätäkutsu, Dirs. Hannes Vartiainen & Pekka Veikkolainen) and French/Chinese co-production Yak Butter Lamp (La lampe au beurre de yak, Dir. Hu Wei) both of which featured prominently in Cineuropa’s Top 5 European Short Films of 2014 (read the news).  Also on tap will be the UK’s L’Assenza, directed by respected UK film critic Jonathan Romney, about a man who discovers his double starring in an Italian film from the 1960s and Dad’s Stick, the latest film from stalwart British artist/filmmaker John Smith. There are also UK premieres for Finnish film Six Day Run (Kuuden päivän juoksu, Dir. Mika Taanila), Greek work On the Threshold (Sto katofli, Dir. Anastasia Kratidi) and French short Erotos (Dir. Grégory Montaldo). Scottish filmmaker and musician Adam Stafford – whose 2009 documentary The Shutdown won prizes at Palm Springs – will World Premiere No Hope For Men Below at the GSFF. The film is a poetic reinterpretation of The Redding Pit Disaster of Falkirk that occurred in 1923.

The festival will also showcase a massive programme of Scottish Short Films – and include an exploration of the current Scottish filmmaking scene – as well as focus on the relationship between music and film.