The programme for Scotland’s newest event, Aberdeen International Film Festival, which will run for nine days from the 2nd of October to the 12th, was launched on Saturday, introducing a diverse selection of films not just from Scotland but from as far afield as Canada and Japan too.

Opening with A Curious Life, Dunstan Bruce’s documentary about the rise of the Levellers, and a pair of short films, Date and Please Check, the festival — overseen by creative director Peter Watt — will continue apace with up to six screenings a day across the city’s two Cineworld cinemas — Union Square and Queen’s Links. It will close the following Sunday with Tanner Beard and Russell Cummings’ 6 Bullets to Hell.Aberdeen Film Festival

The other films on offer include The 25,000 Mile Love Story, a documentary following fundraisers Serge and Nicole Roetheli’s attempts to travel a distance equivalent in length to the world’s circumference; Han Gong-Ju, a South Korean drama exploring the eponymous hero’s mysterious past; and Scopia, a London-set psychological thriller about a white-collar worker who undergoes hypnotic regression.

Aberdeen will host European premieres of Ryan O’Leary’s The Backseat and Gary Hawes’ Leap 4 Your Life, UK premieres of Christopher Presswell’s Candlestick and Yoji Hamada’s Little House, and Scottish premieres of Hirobumi Watanabe’s And The Mud Ship Sails Away and Erik Knudsen’s The Raven on the Jetty. There will also be special screenings of Alien Lullabyes, Here Iran and The Redwood Massacre. Not to mention Dragonball Z: Battle of the Gods.

The festival will also include short films, workshops and something called The 48 Hour Film Project, an ambitious competition which asks filmmakers to write, shoot, edit and score a short film in the space of forty-eight hours. Production is to take place over the 26th, 27th and 28th of September, starting at 19:00 on Friday and finishing at 19:00 on Sunday. Entries will be screened on Tuesday the 7th of October at Cineworld Union Square.

For more details, and to browse the programme yourself, head over to the official site here.