Samizdat 2025 Programme
Festival at a glance
Glasgow: 30 September–4 October, The Pyramid at Anderston and Glasgow Film Theatre
Aberdeen: 10 & 11 October, Belmont Cinema pop-up
Ayr: 23 October, Ayr Film Society
Edinburgh: 9 & 10 November, Filmhouse
Online: 31 October–13 November
Photos
Key Information
tickets
Tickets for Samizdat 2025 events at the Pyramid at Anderston were available for purchase on our Eventbrite. For screenings at Glasgow Film Theatre, see their website directly.
Samizdat strives to ensure that our line-up can be seen by as many people as possible. Most of our events were priced on a pay-what-you-can scale:
£2: “I find it difficult to meet everyday costs.”
£4: “I can meet everyday costs but sometimes find it hard to do so.”
£6: “I can meet everyday costs.”
£8: “I can comfortably meet everyday costs.”
£10: “I can comfortably meet everyday costs and may have access to savings.”
£12: “I would like to pay extra so that Samizdat can continue offering sliding scale tickets for their events!”
Our Audience Access Fund was in place to support audiences if the ticket or other costs, such as childcare or transport, made attending screenings unaffordable.
accessibility
All of our 2025 events took place in wheelchair accessible venues. Our screenings usually have English language subtitles, and many also have descriptive subtitles: for details, please consult individual event listings. These also include access and content notes.
For more details on our accessibility measures, please see our accessibility page.
Volunteering
Volunteers are crucial to events like ours, to help make sure the festival runs smoothly and everyone has a positive experience. We were really happy to be met with an enthusiastic response when we put out our volunteer call out for this year’s event. Volunteering applications are now closed, and we will be in touch with applicants shortly.
Slackers, Rebels, Misfits: Teens on Film
For the return of Samizdat’s special genre strand, 2025 was the year of the teen. Curators Hattie Idle and Joe McFarlane brought together a collection of four films that traverse the landscape of cinematic adolescence. Read more…
Full programme
Samizdat x Filmhouse: Stuff and Dough / Marfa și banii (Cristi Puiu, 2001)
A landmark of 2000s Romanian cinema, this dark comedy of errors follows a listless teen Ovidiu and his slacker friends…
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Samizdat x Filmhouse: Ani-Masters. Pioneers of Czech Animation
The latest instalment of Samizdat Eastern European Film Festival’s animations programme provides a sweeping overview of the astonishing creativity and innovation of Czech animation in the 20th Century, spotlighting how it acts as a prism of shifting social, political, and cultural landscapes...
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Samizdat x Ayr Film Society: Closely Watched Trains / Ostře Sledované Vlaky (Jiří Menzel, 1966)
A classic of the Czechoslovak New Wave, Jiří Menzel’s directorial debut presents an absurd, comedic depiction of youth under occupation…
Samizdat x Belmont Cinema: Nice Ladies (Mariia Ponomarova, 2025)
Mariia Ponomarova’s debut feature length documentary, Nice Ladies was originally conceived as a portrait of women over 50 defying ageism, sexism, and societal expectations. The film transformed during production in response to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine…
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Samizdat x Belmont Cinema: Closely Watched Trains / Ostře Sledované Vlaky (Jiří Menzel, 1966)
A classic of the Czechoslovak New Wave, Jiří Menzel’s directorial debut presents an absurd, comedic depiction of youth under occupation…
Closely Watched Trains / Ostře Sledované Vlaky (Jiří Menzel, 1966)
A classic of the Czechoslovak New Wave, Jiří Menzel’s directorial debut presents an absurd, comedic depiction of youth under occupation…
Southern Chronicles / Pietinia kronikas (Ignas Miškinis, 2024)
The life of teenage Rimantas revolves around rugby, music, and small black-market hustles — until his crush on Monika brings books into it…
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The Pied Piper / Krysař (Jiří Barta, 1986)
In this striking adaptation of the German medieval fairy tale, master Czech animator Jiří Barta offers a nightmarish allegory about human greed and folly, told through the story of the corrupt citizens of an unknown medieval town plagued by rats. When the Pied Piper arrives to banish these vermin, the townsfolk’s avarice leads them to get more than what they bargained for…
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Ashes and Diamonds / Popiół i diament (Andrzej Wajda, 1958)
Andrzej Wajda’s highly stylised adaptation of an iconic novel depicts the tragedy of a generation lost to the conflicts of their time…
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Borscht Film Club presents: Solaris Mon Amour (Kuba Mikurda, 2023) + Grandmamaunt-sistercat (ZUZA Banasińska, 2024)
Presented by Borscht Film Club, Solaris Mon Amour is a hypnotic found footage documentary inspired by Stanisław Lem’s Solaris. Paired with Grandmamauntsistercat, an archival essay by Zuza Banasińska, it explores memory, grief, and the emotional residue of ideology…
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Stuff and Dough / Marfa și banii (Cristi Puiu, 2001)
A landmark of 2000s Romanian cinema, this dark comedy of errors follows a listless teen Ovidiu and his slacker friends…
Book tickets →
Nice Ladies (Mariia Ponomarova, 2024)
Mariia Ponomarova’s debut feature length documentary, Nice Ladies was originally conceived as a portrait of women over 50 defying ageism, sexism, and societal expectations. The film transformed during production in response to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine…
Book tickets →
Samizdat 2025 Short Film Competition, Block 2
Following last year’s Audience Award for Alex Milic’s Consul of Nowhereland (Montenegro), this year’s competition brings 14 new titles — from Poland and Iran to Uzbekistan and Greece. Once again, you — our audience — will vote for the winner…
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Lord of the Flies / Повелитель Мух + Champion Number One / Чемпион Номер Один (Vladimir Tyulkin, 1991)
More than thirty years after their original release, this is the first Scottish screening of two of Vladimir Tyulkin’s comedic and eccentric Soviet-era Kazakh documentaries where he blends absurdity, pathos, and satire in bizarre, unforgettable portraits…
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Samizdat 2025 Short Film Competition, Block 1
Following last year’s Audience Award for Alex Milic’s Consul of Nowhereland (Montenegro), this year’s competition brings 14 new titles — from Poland and Iran to Uzbekistan and Greece. Once again, you — our audience — will vote for the winner. Our first block moves between sharp, playful storytelling and intimate testimonies, bridging the gap between the personal and the political…
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War Songs / Пісні про війну (Sashko Protyah, 2025)
War Songs is a documentary musical which tells the story of war and pacifism through songs and melodies recorded in Mariupol from the end of 20th century to the beginning of 2022, when the city was erased and captured by Russia.
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Get Angry: Ceasefire + Other Shorts (Various, 2023–2025)
From Artsakh to Ukraine, Bosnia to Palestine, this collection of shorts traces the fractures of home, memory, and language across landscapes marked by displacement, military occupation, and genocidal violence.…
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White Mountains / Трудная Переправа (Melis Ubukeyev, 1964) + Where Russia Ends / Там, де закінчується Росія (Oleksiy Radynski, 2024)
A 1960s Kyrgyz gem White Mountains, preceded by Where Russia Ends, a poignant found footage short from Ukraine.
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A State in a State / სახელმწიფო სახელმწიფოში (Tekla Aslanishvili, 2022) + Queer Armenian Shorts
This lineup brings together three experimental films from the South Caucasus, all by women filmmakers. The longest is Tekla Islanishvili’s recent documentary A State in a State, tracing the fragmented railway infrastructure across Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia in a slow yet vivid homage to a region torn by ethnic hatred, corruption and the convulsions of Russian colonialism…
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Opening event. Ani-Masters: Pioneers of Czech Animation
The latest instalment of Samizdat Eastern European Film Festival’s animations programme provides a sweeping overview of the astonishing creativity and innovation of Czech animation in the 20th Century, spotlighting how it acts as a prism of shifting social, political, and cultural landscapes...
Book tickets →
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