Between 31 October and 10 November, we will have the opportunity to enjoy the 65th edition of the Thessaloniki International Film Festival, which, as we have already mentioned, will pay tribute to the Greek director Panos H. Koutras. Greece’s most prestigious film event will be inaugurated by the Chilean Pablo Larraín‘s film Maria, which premiered at the last Venice Film Festival, and starred Angelina Jolie. This highly personal biopic shows us the retired soprano in Paris and closes the trilogy of iconic women of the 20th century, after his portraits of Jackie Onassis and Diana Spencer. Joshua Oppenheimer, present in Thessaloniki, will close the festival on Sunday 10 November, with his first fiction film, The End, starring Tilda Swinton and Michael Shannon, in a cast completed by George MacKay and Moses Ingramun. The End is a post-apocalyptic musical about the end of the world, a sardonic fusion of black comedy, psychological thriller, and quirky sci-fi, where political and environmental issues are not spared. The film by the director of The Act of Killing (2012) and The Look of Silence (2014) focuses on our weaknesses when taking responsibility for our actions and accepting their consequences.
Angelina Jolie as Maria Callas in Maria by Pablo Larraín.
Guest filmmakers at the 65th TIFF include composer Zbigniew Preisner, a collaborator of Krzysztof Kieślowski, music editor Suzana Perić, who has worked with directors such as Martin Scorsese, Greta Gerwig, and Peter Jackson, and showrunner and executive producer Anna Winger, known for the hits Unorthodox and Transatlantic, among others.
In addition to the Alexander, the Festival’s official awards, several independent prizes will be awarded in recognition of the desire to revitalize Greek cinema, the most recent of which is the FOS, sponsored by PPC (Public Power Corporation), which for the first time will recognize an actor and actress, either in a leading or supporting role, participating as debutants in a feature film in the official section. As every year, nine other awards will recognize Greek cinema, including the Fischer Award, presented by the public; the Greek Film Centre’s awards for Debut Director and Best Location; the two awards given by ERT S.A. (Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation), one for the film awarded by FIPRESCI, and the other for Best Original Music. The Finos Film Award, the J.F. Costopoulos Foundation Award, which supports the Hellenic film industry, the FIPRESCI award by a jury of professional critics, the Greek Critics Association Award, the Young Jury Award (made up of students from the Aristotle and Macedonian Universities of Thessaloniki) and the Crew United Award (the leading online platform connecting audiovisual professionals in Europe) awarded to a director of the Official Competition/Meet the Neighbors+/>> Film Forward will complete the list of independent awards.
Arcadia, by Yorgos Zois.
The Greek Films
A total of 22 feature films and 24 short films —shortlisted by Christos Bakatselos (film critic), Mina Dreki (producer), and Spiros Jacovides (director and producer)— will be screened as part of the Greek Film Festival, demonstrating the vitality and support for Greek filmmakers through numerous initiatives. Eighteen films will have their premiere within the framework of the festival, and nine will take part in the competition section. Yorgos Zois‘ Arcadia, Dimitris Nakos’ Meat, and Yannis Veslemes‘ She Loved Blossoms More are in the international section, while Christos Pitharas’ Hunt, Christos Massalas‘ Killerwood and Orfeas Peretzis’ Riviera are competing in Meet the Neighbors+. Three other films: CAFÉ 404 by Alexandros Tsilifonis, Maldives by Daniel Bolda, and Kyuka Before Summer’s End by Kostis Charamountanis have been selected in the competitive section >>Film Forward.
These are the stories to be told by the Greek productions in the International Competition: Yorgos Zois’ Arcadia, in which the radiant neurologist Katerina has to face her worst suspicions when she accompanies Yannis, a highly respected former doctor, to identify the victim of a tragic car accident in an out-of-season spa. Together, but also on their nocturnal excursions to a mysterious rustic beach bar, they unravel a haunting story of love, loss, acceptance, and abandonment. Dimitris Nakos’ Meat is set in a village in the Greek countryside, where Takis is preparing the opening of his new butcher’s shop. The day before, his son Pavlos kills the neighbor who claims part of his land. The only witness is Christos, a young Albanian who has worked for Takis since childhood. Takis has to decide who will take responsibility. She Loved Blossoms More, by Yannis Veslemes, tells the story of three brothers who build an unusual time machine to bring their mother back to life.
Meet the Neighbors+ brings us the films Hunt, by Christos Pitharas, featuring Yannis, a lonely blacksmith, who finds solace in hunting birds. His next-door neighbour, Elias, constantly mistreats his dog, who stands on the balcony barking and howling, while his master works the night shift. When Yannis’ estranged mother dies, he falls apart. Christos Massalas’ Killerwood will show young director Titos preparing his new film, a thriller about unsolved serial murders in modern-day Athens. Riviera, by Orfeas Peretzis, takes us to Alkistis’ last summer on the Athenian Riviera.
>>Film Forward will include the following Greek films: Alexandros Tsilifonis’ CAFÉ 404, where Jimmy tries to keep the coffee of the title alive, while a mysterious bag seems the only chance to do so but with a price tag that is perhaps unaffordable. Kyuka Before Summer’s End, by Kostis Charamountanis, set in the middle of summer on the island of Poros, where Konstantinos and Elsa sail with their father, Babis, and find their biological mother, who abandoned them as babies. Daniel Bolda’s Maldives is set in the mountains, where a music teacher lives in seclusion with his dog, longing to escape to a new life on a warm beach.
Killerwood, by Christos Massalas.
The First Run section will screen Stratoula Theodoratou’s film Fauna, about a photojournalist, an architect and his demented father, trapped in the centre of Athens. They are all caught up in an ecological disaster that burns down forests and kills dozens of people. Giannis in the Cities by Eleni Alexandrakis is a period drama inspired by the real life of writer Yannis Atzakas, set at the end of the Greek Civil War (1949), where the son of a rebel is deported and his ideas and desires manipulated. Lula LeBlanc, by Stergios Paschos, a family drama in which the granddaughter refuses to attend the funeral of her grandfather, Alekos, preferring to throw a party, and three days before, he meets up with old friends to celebrate the birthday of his first love, now with dementia. Magic Trap, by Nikos Vergitsis, shows us Pandora and Plato, who share a secret, their tears of sadness can grant any wish. Stratos Tzitzis’ The Philosopher (I Have Something to Say) is the comedy of a thinker who wants to be taken seriously when he is nothing more than a failed filmmaker. Kyros Papavassiliou’s The Sock will bring another film director, who suffers an accident that leaves him temporarily disabled. He is helped by his cousin, who is himself permanently disabled. The director decides to make a film about this experience, but everyone becomes an obstacle in the creation of the film, especially the perpetrator of the accident. The River, by Haris Raftogiannis, reveals that what is ‘progress’ for Makis is a threat to Maria. Penny Panagiotopoulou’s Wishbone is the story of Kostas, a security guard at a public hospital, who must take care of his little niece Niki after the sudden death of her older brother.
The Crossing Borders subsection welcomes the premieres of two films related to Greece, shot in the country or abroad (Utopolis, by Vladimir Subotić, about young refugees and the rejection they suffer), and Brando with a Glass Eye, by Antonis Tsonis.
The Greek short films selected for the 65th Thessaloniki Film Festival are 24 in number and will be screened in a special section of the Film Market, accessible to agents and representatives of international short film festivals: Acheron (Konstantina Papadopoulou), Alles Gut (Pavlos Paraskevopoulos), Concrete Rodents (Apostolis Gkanatsios), Dracaena (Sofia Priovolou, Ioannis Panagitidis), Driving Me Crazy (Meni Tsilianidou), Earthbound (Vangelis Dikopoulos), Gekas (Dimitris Moutsiakas), Golden Fingers (Foivos Kontogiannis), Halcyon Days (Alexandros Skouras), Honeymoon (Alki Papastathopoulos), MJ (Yiorgos Fortounis), No Future Kids (Eleni Poulopoulou), Non-essential Movement (Nikoleta Leousi), numb (Despina Kourti), Pave Paradise (Alkaios Spyrou), Pigeons are Dying When the City is on Fire (Stavros Markoulakis), pop (Lina Kountoura), Stelianna (Yannis Bletas), Underground (Giannis Christoforou), The Gardener’s Death (Christina Spiliopoulou), The River Runs Through the Village (Xenophon Nikolakopoulos), What Mary Didn’t Know (Konstantina Kotzamani), What We Ask of a Statue is That it Doesn’t Move (Daphné Hérétakis) and Zange (Iris Baglanea).
Tilda Swinton and Michael Shannon in The End, by Joshua Oppenheimer.
TIFF’s commitment to accessibility is evident in its universally accessible screenings, which underline the Festival’s aim to share the magic of cinema with all audiences, without exception: film screenings with audio-description for the blind and visually impaired and with subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing, both in the physical and online screenings, demonstrate this. With the support of Alpha Bank, accessibility sponsor of the Festival, two emblematic films of Greek cinema will be accessible to all: the iconic films John the Violent (1973) by Tonia Marketaki (the director after whom one of the festival’s screening rooms is named) and Robbery in Athens (1969) by Vangelis Serdaris.
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