Somewhat oddly the first event of the Film Festival that I went to was actually a jazz gig with Tam Dean Burn reading various poems and other writings by Tom McGrath while the SNJO played Ellington and Miles Davis and others.

I knew of McGrath as a playwright and as something of a dramaturg at the Traverse and the Lyceum in the 80s or 90s but didn't know of his jazz interests.  Nor of any involvement in film.  Indeed I don't think he had a lot to do with film.  This evening was a celebration of him as a much admired Scottish cultural icon.
 

In terms of films I've since seen an excellent one directed by and starring Danny Huston, (son of John). The Last Photograph, a very poignant story of loss. Huston did a Q&A afterwards and came over as a really nice guy.

Hostages is a Georgian movie about failed young hijackers hoping to flee to the West. The episode was true but the film was drama rather than documentary.  Only one of them escaped execution. The sad coda was that if they had waited only eight years they would have been able to lawfully leave the USSR. 

Newton was a delightful little comedy about a young Indian civil servant zealously trying to set up and run a polling place for a tiny community in the middle of a jungle plagued by Maoist insurgents. 

Another film with an Indian as star, set this time in Sligo, was Halal Daddy.  It's a lovely romantic comedy with multicultural humour and inter-generational conflict.  Naturally there's a happy ending.  See it if you can.  It's fun.

I can't say the same for The Pugilist.  It's not at all a bad film but I thought it rather a run of the mill story of gangland violence and a good man's struggle against it.  The sort of thing I might watch on TV when I was too lazy to do anything else.