The success of the first edition of the Evia Film Project, the ecological initiative organized by the Thessaloniki International Film Festival, has made it possible for a new summer meeting with the public and the community of film professionals to take place between 20 and 24 June 2023. Once again, open-air screenings, concerts, and workshops for film professionals have been programmed to contribute to the cultural revitalization of a region ravaged by forest fires in a still recent period.
Masterclasses and other events for filmmakers will alternate with workshops for children and students during five days dedicated to “green cinema” in northern Evia. The 2nd Evia Film Project will be held from 20-24 June, in Agia Anna, Edipsos and Limni, and admission to all screenings and events will be free to the public.
Evia Film Project kicks off with Alexander Payne’s film Downsizing (2017) which will be screened at the once abandoned and recently renovated open-air cinema Apollon, which in yet another summer will delight the local audience of Istiea-Edipsos and the community attracted by the event. The film’s director, Alexander Payne, winner of two Oscars for best screenplay, will attend the screening and discuss the film with the audience in the Q&A afterward.
Open-air cinemas in the north of the island, in the towns of Edipsos and Limni, will screen fiction and documentary films by well-known Greek and foreign filmmakers. In addition, a special screening will be held in the central square of Agia Anna.
Downsizing (Alexander Payne, 2017).
At Edipsos, on Wednesday 21 we can watch Taming the Garden (Salomé Jashi, 2021), a co-production between Switzerland, Germany and Georgia, in which a powerful and anonymous man has developed an unusual hobby: buying hundred-year-old trees in Georgian coastal communities, some as tall as 15-story buildings, for his private garden. An ode to the rivalry between man and nature, and at the same time a whimsical investigation of “uprootedness” as a metaphor, the film portrays the needs and values of Georgian society today, while reflecting on forced movement and voluntary immobility on an ever-changing planet.
On Thursday 22 June, the French-Austrian documentary We Come as Friends (Hubert Sauper, 2014), a modern odyssey, a dizzying, sci-fi journey into the heart of Africa, will be screened. As Sudan, the continent’s largest country, splits into two nations, an old “civilizing” pathology resurfaces: that of colonialism, the clash of empires, and yet new episodes of bloody (and holy) wars over land and resources. The director of Darwin’s Nightmare (2004) takes us on this journey in his little tin and canvas flying machine, leading us to the most unlikely places and into the thoughts and dreams of the people, in a way that is as astonishing as it is heartbreaking. Chinese oil workers, UN peacekeepers, Sudanese warlords, and American evangelists ironically find common ground in this documentary.
We Come as Friends (Hubert Sauper, 2014).
A short documentary and an animated film await us on Friday 23rd, at the Apollon cinema. Roots (Dimitris Trompoukis, 2023) is a Greek-produced short film that captures the rhythms of life of the residents of northern Evia, following the fire that devastated the area in 2021. We see the existing (problematic) situation through the perspective of the people living in the area and then move on to an in-depth analysis of the productive sectors and the local economy that has been affected and are in the recovery phase, with the aim of building a sustainable development model that can be implemented through spatial planning.
White Plastic Sky (Tibor Bánóczki & Sarolta Szabó, 2023), a co-production between Hungary and Slovakia, takes us to a dystopia in which there are no more animals or plants on Earth and the remaining humans live under a plastic dome. The price for their survival is very high: at the age of 50, they are implanted with a special seed that turns them into a tree that will provide oxygen and food for the community. A young man, Stefan, accepts this system… until the day his wife Nóra decides to give up her life and undergo voluntary implantation. Driven by his love for her, Stefan decides to break the rules of society in order to save her. Animation artists Tibor Bánóczki and Sarolta Szabó used rotoscoping techniques in their dystopian epic. Geologists, botanists, and meteorologists collaborated on the script, giving this fantasy-laden story a solid scientific basis. A deeply moving eco-fantasy that tackles head-on the climate apocalypse threatening life on Earth, suffused with the melancholy of those most aware of how close humanity is to extinction. However, as with the protagonist couple in this captivating love story, this burden is lightened by their keen sense of the beauty of the world.
White Plastic Sky (Tibor Bánóczki & Sarolta Szabó, 2023).
The other screening venue, Limni, will simultaneously offer several screenings, starting on Wednesday 21 with Landfill Harmonic – A Symphony of the Human Spirit (Brad Allgood & Graham Townsley, 2015). This co-production between the USA, Paraguay, Norway, and Brazil follows the Orquesta Reciclada de Cateura, a Paraguayan musical group that plays instruments made entirely from rubbish. When their story goes viral, the orchestra is catapulted to worldwide fame. Under the guidance of idealistic musical director Favio Chávez, the orchestra must navigate a strange new world of stadiums and sold-out concerts.
On Thursday 22 June, the Elymnion cinema in Limni will host the screening of Birdwatchers (Marco Bechis, 2008), an Italian-Brazilian co-production that takes us to Mato Grosso do Sul in Brazil, where landowners live in luxury, spending the nights with tourists who visit the area for birdwatching. Meanwhile, just outside their properties, the agitation of the indigenous people who were once the legal owners of this land is increasingly fiery. Exiled to reservation sites, with no other prospect but to work as modern-day slaves on the sugar plantations, many young members of the indigenous community are driven to suicide. One such incident will ignite the flame of resistance, when a group of Guaraní-Kaiowá Indians camp outside a property, demanding what is theirs.
Luzzu (Alex Camilleri, 2021).
Utama (Alejandro Loayza Grisi, 2022) will be screened on Friday 23rd at Limni. It is a Bolivian, Uruguayan, and French production, set somewhere in the Altiplano, between the imposing volcanic peaks of the Andes mountain range, and one of the most important wildlife areas on the planet. There, an elderly indigenous couple leads a daily life full of adversity but in harmony with nature. The epic beauty of the landscape, the light on the wrinkled and stoic faces, and the warmth of the palette… reveal the true protagonist: the land. The language of film will speak of what lies beneath and above the surface of this arid, sunburnt expanse.
On Saturday 24th we will see the Maltese film Luzzu (Alex Camilleri, 2021), in which a fisherman struggles to make an honest living for his wife and newborn baby, against competition, illegal fishing, and a black market that plagues the island’s fish market… until he succumbs to the rules of the game. Sailing from an unexpected corner of the cinematic map, Alex Camilleri’s debut is a piece of cinéma vérité that would make the Dardenne brothers proud. The American-Maltese director paints an authentic picture of his birthplace, sketching a genuinely alternative way of life and development. At the same time, he gets a great performance from his non-professional protagonist, a real-life fisherman, who received a well-deserved award at the Sundance Film Festival.
On a unique evening, Agia Anna Square will host the screening of When Tomatoes Met Wagner (Marianna Economou, 2019) on Friday 23 June, winner of the Thessaloniki Documentary Film Festival in 2019, as well as the Aegean Film Festival, having participated in other competitions such as the Sarajevo Festival and Palm Springs, and having been shortlisted for the Oscars. With a large dose of humor, a group of women from the Thessaly region of central Greece take on the globalized economy with a tomato in hand. With a little help from Wagner, whose music they play on the loudspeakers they place in their fields, as well as the stories they tell to gather strength, they try to make their way in the market by organically cultivating an aged tomato seed. Marianna Economou, who will participate in a discussion with the audience after the screening, touches the right chords between laughter and tears to show us that there is a parallel path to the whirlwind of a universal ecological and social crisis.
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