27º TiDF: Papaioannou, Immigration and Dictatorship

The 27th Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival has provided a comprehensive overview of the genre, with a special focus on Greek productions. Among them, three standout Greek films have participated in different sections of the festival.

In the International Competition section, the world premiere of Eva Stefani’s fourth entry in the festival took place. She previously won the FIPRESCI award in 2009 with Bathers (2008). The Greek director, who has been friends with choreographer and multidisciplinary artist Dimitris Papaioannou since their teenage years, had long wanted to capture his work in a film, and she has finally achieved it with Bull’s Heart. The documentary, produced by Onassis Culture, focuses on the rehearsals for the performance Transverse Orientation at Onassis Stegi during the COVID-19 health crisis. Over two years, Stefani documents the production’s preparation, uncertain whether it will ever premiere due to pandemic restrictions. Eventually, the performance is staged in Vilnius, London, Paris, and other cities.

The uncertainty of not knowing when a work will premiere or reach an audience adds another layer of reflection on the creation of an artistic piece and its ultimate meaning. Tireless and undeterred by each new postponement, Papaioannou continues working with the same energy on a performance that might never be seen by anyone. With a minimal team of no more than three people, Eva Stefani offers us a behind-the-scenes look and a glimpse into the artist’s genius—his working method and how he confronts personal hardships (his father is gravely ill with cancer during the rehearsals). The poetic essence that permeates all of Papaioannou’s work also flows through the images of his early comics, where his unmistakable style knew no creative limits.

The director focuses her lens on Papaioannou’s daily routine, his perfectionism, and his unique relationship with his performers, capturing the present moment without a retrospective look at the vast body of work of this singular creator. As a result, those unfamiliar with his career may not fully grasp the scope of his talent from the images presented, but they will gain insight into his philosophy, part of his creative universe, and the sources of inspiration he himself acknowledges in the film: That’s the joy of art, I think; it makes you feel there’s something more than the mundane life you lead.

The documentary A Couple of Years, featured in the Open Horizons section, offers an intimate perspective on the odyssey that, in the 1960s, led Greek workers to Germany in search of a better life, as seen through two generations of immigrants. With an opening sequence of archival footage, director Lydia Konsta tells the story of some of the 600,000 Greeks, known as Gastarbeiters, who initially planned to spend just the “couple of years” referenced in the film’s title working tirelessly before returning home to secure a stable future without financial hardship. However, reality took a different turn, and those two years stretched into an entire lifetime, with many only returning to Greece at the end of their working lives. The descendants of that first wave of immigrants still navigate between two cultures—their heritage and the country where they studied, built their adult lives, and call home.

Through Teo, Aglaia, and Vasso—who in turn introduce us to their parents—we gain firsthand, personal insight into what it meant, and still means, to grow up marked by a sense of estrangement, the pressure to preserve their roots, and the ease with which they embraced a way of life that was the first they ever knew. Both cultures interact within them, and in Teo’s case, we see that they are not a duality or a contrast, but rather a fusion—an added layer of identity that blends with other influences shaping his personality, without exclusion or conflict. Thinking in one language or the other interchangeably, living a reality where no choice has to be made, is the miracle of interculturality. However, this can sometimes clash with previous generations, who demand loyalty and permanence, seeking to uphold traditions or maintain physical ties to a homeland through the choice of where to live.

The different testimonies of the three protagonists offer distinct perspectives, shaped by their experiences and how they interpret them, despite sharing a common foundation. Vasso is torn between two countries, always longing for the one she is not in; Aglaia returns to Greece and her family environment; while Teo considers himself a citizen of the world.

In the Newcomers Competition section, Thanassis Vassiliou’s first feature film, written with Christos Chryssopoulos, entitled Lo (a Greek dialect expression for asking for silence), was highlighted. This film also relates a personal experience linked to the recent history of Greece. In the film, we follow the director and narrator, who returns from France to Athens, two years after the death of his mother, to accept or reject a burdensome inheritance, dismantle the family home and confront his family ghosts. The empty apartment where he spent his childhood, still inhabited by his mother’s library, whose books are filled with handwritten notes and advice, provokes a torrent of feelings and inner conflicts, which ultimately turn out to be rooted in a collective drama, the Dictatorship of the Colonels that lasted from 1967 to 1974.

Lo, which participated in the Thessaloniki Pitching Forum 2023, AGORA Docs in Progress 2024, is also an attempt to unravel a mystery, the suspicion that the protagonist’s father belonged to the political police in the darkest years of contemporary Greek history. Starting from the discovery of A Man by Oriana Fallaci in the family library and tracing the story of the poet imprisoned and tortured for years, Alekos Panagoulis, Thanassis questions the figure of a father who in his childhood left him behind to form a new family, and with whom he has never achieved the desired closeness. The need to reveal the truth of a past shrouded in silence is now imperative for him and turns out to be the perfect moment to heal wounds and make internal peace with an unresolved filial conflict.