From the awkward truths of growing up to tortured artistic genius to the ruthless plains of the Old West, this year’s Glasgow Film Festival had an eclectic set of cinematic choices on offer. Here are ten of the best I saw at the country’s most exciting film fest.

Mid90s

Jonah Hill’s directorial debut kicked the festival off in style. It trades in a very specific kind of nostalgia, as its title suggests, very much feeling like it’s achingly informed by Hill’s own childhood as it follows 13-year-old Stevie (Sunny Suljic) attempting to navigate the trials and tribulations of being a young impressionable teenager charming his way into a group of older boys who spend much of their time skateboarding around Los Angeles. Even as it skates along routes familiar from other coming-of-age tales, Hill does so with a refreshing and clear-eyed precision, fine-tuning this little rose-tinted adventure with an engrossing aesthetic. It’s at once hilarious and pathos-filled, uncompromising and compassionate in its view on a very specific era and period of adolescence, and a pure joy to experience.

The Sisters Brothers

French director Jacques Audiard (A Prophet, Rust and Bone) makes his English-language debut with this particularly oddball Western that really makes the most out of its eclectic cast. Joaquin Phoenix and John C. Reilly are perfectly cast in their oppositeness, playing the titular brotherly assassins in 19850s Oregon on a mission to hunt down gold prospector Hermann Kermit Warm (Riz Ahmed), a man also being tracked by eccentric scout John Morris (Jake Gyllenhaal). From its intentionally awkward title on down, nothing about this Western fits neatly into the moulds we’ve come to expect with the genre. But that’s a large part of why it’s such a delight to behold. With bouts of violence standing in striking contrast to the film’s sumptuous visual style, it’s a playful, spiky and erratic cinematic escapade that benefits from a stellar cast clearly relishing in being able to play such volatile men mired in various stages of existential crises.

The Hole in the Ground

Aussie horror The Babadook and Spanish chiller The Orphanage are just some of the palpable influences that can be felt coursing through the veins of this impressive feature debut from writer-director Lee Cronin about young mother Sarah (Seána Kerslake) who moves into a new remote Irish home. After encountering both a disturbed neighbour and a mysterious giant hole in the middle of the nearby woods, she starts suspecting that something may be wrong with her young son Chris (James Quinn Markey). Talk of it being this year’s Hereditary turned out to be unfounded – it doesn’t have the thematic weightiness. Nevertheless this digs out a striking place in Irish horror, doing what it does with skin-crawling effectiveness, mounting one unsettling set-piece after another to the tune of a consistently unnerving atmosphere.

Dragged Across Concrete

Following the brutally violent one-two punch of Bone Tomahawk and Brawl in Cell Block 99, director S. Craig Zahler returns with this lengthy, tough-talking gut shot of neo-noir-tinged pulp fiction. Mel Gibson and Vince Vaughn make for a surprisingly effective pairing as a couple of tough-as-nails cops who, following their suspension due to their penchant for excessive force, take it upon themselves to investigate a case while eyeing a quick payday they feel is rightfully theirs after years of hard work. While it’s rarely as outright graphic as the director’s previous work, a pervasive sense of ruthlessness and foreboding brutality can nevertheless be felt throughout, eschewing swift pacing and high-speed thrills for a more slow-burning character drama where people are weighed down by their choices along a sliding scale of immorality. It contains many-a-scene that won’t be easily shaken from the mind.

At Eternity’s Gate

Willem Dafoe was justifiably nominated for a Best Actor Oscar for his chameleonic performance as famed artist Vincent Van Gogh in this resplendent, impressionistic film from director Julian Schnabel (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly). To call it a biopic is only a half truth in a way as it diverts the viewer down idiosyncratic paths of painterly interpretation of what the artist was said to have done via letters, hearsay and plain old creative invention. The result is something stirring and unforgettable, from its visual palette which seeks to evoke Van Gogh’s unique artistic style to Dafoe’s dramatically anchoring, fascinatingly unpredictable performance as one of history most famous figures. Schnabel creates a soulful, textured portrayal that transports you into the psyche of a clearly tortured man as much as it leaves you with no doubt as to why he’s so revered.

Under the Silver Lake

Since leaving the Spider-Man franchise behind, Andrew Garfield has taken on some fun and challenging roles. Director David Robert Mitchell’s follow-up to acclaimed horror It Follows is certainly no different. Garfield plays a kind of millennial version of The Dude from The Big Lebowski who finds himself embroiled in a decidedly bizarre, enjoyably anarchic mystery after his beautiful neighbour goes missing. Feeling like someone has dunked 21st century bewilderment in skulking 1950s Hollywood noir, it’s absolutely not for everyone; well on its way to being two and a half hours long, its endless stream of branching narrative threads that don’t always go anywhere tangible may put some off. But wade into its kooky waters with open arms and you’ll find something consistently unpredictable, creative, hilarious and unique. An unconventional gem that has future cult classic written all over it.

Eighth Grade

What is it like to be a 13-year-old girl in a society where likes, shares, tweets and views are the valued currency of a generation? With his quite remarkable debut, stand-up sensation Bo Burnham invites us into that world not to necessarily give an easy answer to that question but envelope us in the day-to-day life of introverted but friendly teenager Kayla Day (Elsie Fisher). She spends her time creating videos where she shares tips on life as she sees it just as she’s about to say goodbye to her awkward time in eighth grade. Proving herself as one of the most exciting young talents around, Elsie Fisher gives an extraordinarily open-hearted, beguiling and believably awkward performance working in harmony with Burnham’s brilliantly observant, honest script and sensitive yet creative direction to create something with the ring of painful, awkward and ultimately beautiful truth about it.

Hotel Mumbai

This harrowing thriller dramatizes the infamous 2008 terrorist attacks on the city of Mumbai, chiefly on the prestigious Taj Mahal Palace Hotel in which hundreds of people (staff, locals and tourists alike) were either killed or taken hostage. The film follows various different hostages - including staff member Arjun (Dev Patel) and honeymooners and new parents Zahra (Nazanin Boniadi) and David (Armie Hammer) – as they do their best to stay hidden while waiting for help. Something like this could very easily come off as cheaply exploitative but the drama is handled with a deft mixture of tact and never shying away from the brutal reality of their situation, with the human cost always at the forefront of its mind. It’s never an easy watch but nor should it be, giving us an uncompromising look at a relatively recent historical tragedy that delivers emotional heft as it keeps you on the edge of your seat.

Arctic

With his compelling feature debut, director Joe Penna shows why survival thrillers have been such a stalwart of cinema over the years. We follow one man (Mads Mikkelsen) stranded in the Arctic after some sort of plane crash. When a rescue helicopter also crashes, he finds he has an injured woman to also help survive, quickly deciding to take the perilous journey on foot to find rescue. Penna creates a keen sense of what it means to be stuck in the middle of nowhere with nothing but your wits to survive the harsh conditions, bringing a sense of gritty believability as he delivers some truly teeth-clenching scenes of tension. And Mikkelsen only elevates its power, providing a stoic presence and a welcome dose of emotional pathos.

Gloria Bell

The unexpected but nevertheless warmly-received choice for this year’s always-anticipated Surprise Film: a shrewdly self-aware character dramedy from fame director Sebastián Lelio (A Fantastic Woman, Disobedience). The incomparable Julianne Moore gives a simply stunning performance as the eponymous free-spirited mother and divorcee looking for love in her ‘50s, eventually starting a complex relationship with the similarly love-searching Arnold (John Turturro) after the two meet at an LA dance club. A remake of Lelio’s own 2013 Chilean film, there’s something so wonderfully full of life about this depiction of middle-aged romance, something warm and almost soothing in the beautiful way it’s shot, disarmingly-comforting in its aptitude for genuinely laugh-out-loud observational comedy and truthfully awkward character interactions to the point where the unexpected, hard-hitting emotional twists and turns sting that much more potently.