The Film Verdict: Thessaloniki Reviews 2022

THE AWARDS

INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION

WEEKLY REVIEW SPOTLIGHT

GOLDEN ALEXANDER – BEST FEATURE FILM

I Have Electric Dreams

Directed by Valentina Maurel Belgium France Costa Rica

SILVER ALEXANDER – SPECIAL JURY AWARD

A Piece of Sky Michael Koch Switzerland

BRONZE ALEXANDER BEST DIRECTOR

Chie Hayakawa for the film Plan 75 Japan Philippines Qatar

BEST ACTRESS

Rosy McEwen for the film Blue Jean UK

BEST ACTOR

Reinaldo Amien Gutiérrez for the film I Have Electric Dreams

BEST ARTISTIC ACHIEVEMENT

The Dam, Ali Cherri France Lebanon Sudan Qatar Germany Serbia

SPECIAL MENTION

Narcosis

Directed by Martjin de Jong Netherlands

THESSALONIKI 2022: THE VERDICT

A big city cinephile banquet with a refreshingly relaxed late night timetable, the 63rd Thessaloniki International Film Festival returned with packed cinemas and even more packed parties last week following its muted, Covid aware comeback a year ago. Even as the cool November evenings drew in, the city’s outdoor pavement cafes, grungy bars and ocean boardwalks were still heaving with revellers long past midnight. After a cautious few years, My Big Fat Greek Film Festival felt like it was back in full Dionysian mode.

A giant horseback statue of local hero Alexander The Great towers over Thessaloniki’s bustling central waterfront area. The impact of this all powerful emperor, and unlikely Colin Farrell lookalike, endures even today at the film festival, where the main prizes are named after him. This year, the Golden and Silver Alexander winners in the international sections included Valentina Maurel’s sensual coming of age drama I Have Electric Dreams, Ali Chebbi’s powerfully strange political allegory The Dam… Full Review

CULTURAL EPICENTER THESSALONIKI

MEET THE NEIGHBORS

TFV. Over the course of its 63 years, the Thessaloniki International Film Festival has developed into Greece’s most important film event. What is the recipe for its continued success? Do you think its commitment to new and emerging directors is still a big part of its identity?

We try not to be complacent. We are constantly looking for ways to get better, while we continue to rely on our strengths: supporting films in Southeast Europe and the Balkans, bringing together experienced filmmakers with emerging voices, showcasing the best in independent cinema. The vast majority of the actions

hosted by Agora, our developmental branch, are targeted to bringing forth the promising voices of tomorrow’s cinema. In this direction, over the recent years we have set up a “Meet the Future” section, which gives prominence to a different professional field of the film industry, showcasing the upcoming talents from Greece and providing them with useful tools and advice for consolidating their position in a fiercely competitive business.

TFV: What do you think of the distressing news that some established festivals like Edinburgh are closing down? How can we make sure the festival scene stays alive in the face of economic changes?

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BEHIND THE HAYSTACKS

VERDICT: Writer director

Asimina Proedrou's grimly compelling debut feature is a contemporary Greek tragedy about family conflicts and border tensions.

Stephen Dalton, November 11, 2022 Tragic events ripple across a small community on the border between Greece and North Macedonia in writer director Asimina Proedrou’s bleakly compelling debut feature, Behind The Haystacks. Grounded in gutsy performances and downbeat social realism, this solemn ensemble drama takes place in 2015, when large numbers of refugees from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and other war torn nations began surging through the “Balkan corridor” towards western Europe. But while it opens like a familiar migration themed narrative, this Greek Macedonian German co production Full Review

Elise Jalladeau, General Director of the Thessaloniki International Film Festival

CULTURAL EPICENTER THESSALONIKI

documentaries. This year we also organized the Evia that took place in Northern Evia where the destructive fires took place in 2021. Taking into account this long list of activities, actions and events, it is no exaggeration to say that our organization is providing a global 365 experience to its cinema loving audience.

TFV: The war in Ukraine has put the whole of Europe on edge, including the Balkans. How is that reflected in this year’s selection?

Any news of a festival stopping its activities or even of a cinema venue closing down is bad not only for all the festival circuit, but also for the whole film industry. What we can do is to constantly try looking for ways to evolve. This is what we aspire to do in Thessaloniki International Film Festival. For this purpose, this year we are launching a new initiative: we have established a series of think tanks that, together with big and medium size industry hubs in Europe, will try to answer a series of questions about the future of film markets. Part of our quest is to answer this exact question: how can a film market and thus a festival evolve in light of all the big changes happening on the festival scene? The outcome will be presented at a special event at the Cannes Film Festival in 2023.

TFV: Thessaloniki is also connected to a Film Museum and Library. How does their work influence the film festival?

Thessaloniki Film Festival is a cultural institution, one of the most important ones in Southeast Europe, that is working all year long. We have a Cinemathèque hosting tributes, we operate four cinemas, as well as the Cinema Museum and Film Library (the only one in the region.) We organize educational screenings for kids, open air events, specialized events, but most of all we run, organize, and carry out two film festivals: the International Film Festival in November for feature films and the Film Project, a green initiative with screenings of films, an industry section, masterclasses and talks, Documentary Film Festival in March for

We haven’t forgotten the Russian invasion in Ukraine. Last year, the Ukrainian documentary House of Splinters won the Golden Alexander award at the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival. Moreover, we hosted two special screenings that were added to TDF's schedule literally at the last minute: Toloka by Mikhail Ilenko and The Great Utopia by Fotos Lambrinos. Regarding the ongoing edition of the 63rd Thessaloniki International Film Festival, we are screening four Ukrainian films, including Mariupolis II by director Mantas Kvedaravicius, who lost his life last March in the long suffering city.

TFV: Thessaloniki is renowned for its friendly atmosphere and the chance of networking it offers film industry participants. How well have these survived the dark years of Covid 19? Now that the world is emerging from this nightmare, what lasting lessons have you learned? For example, in terms of handling large crowds and public safety? What permanent changes has it left in its wake?

We were one of the first film festivals that were hit by the pandemic. We had to postpone the Documentary Film Festival and transfer some of its (Continues next page)

CULTURAL EPICENTER THESSALONIKI (Continued)

activities online. However, we didn’t postpone the Agora Docs, our industry session. We organized it online and it actually worked so well that we were able to discuss the outcome with our colleagues fromother European festivals. The dramatic impact of the COVID 19 pandemic has accelerated changes in the film festival sector. It has challenged film festivals to reconsider their strategies, work practices and business models. We are still trying to find our way through. We communicated with our colleagues all over Europe and we supported a study about the impact that COVID 19 had on European film festivals. We learned to use new tools, to put the safety of the spectators and our staff first. We started using an online platform for viewers across Greece and although we are back to physical screenings, some of the films are also available online, giving the chance to an audience who cannot travel in Thessaloniki to watch films from all over the world. In the hard times we experienced due to the pandemic, an unprecedented global condition that brought our lives in a halt, it was our conscious choice to have the phrase “Cinema, no matter what!” as the motto of our 61st edition in 2020.

TFV: One thing we all learned to do in these years was watch screening links on small computer screens instead of the dream-like conditions of a darkened movie theater. Is that a permanent change?

Nothing can substitute the experience of a physical screening: of getting together, having the same cinematic experience, going through the same motions and feelings. Technology has helped get us through dark times and definitely it will leave a mark on how we are watching films. However, as a recent initiative in Greece showed, when for a day the price of a film ticket was very low, people are willing to return to the big screen under the right conditions. The hybrid format, where online screenings will match and enhance physical screenings, may be here to stay, but our orientation must not succumb to any easy deviation: inciting the audience to rediscover the pleasure of watching a film in a movie theater is an experience that interweaves the individual and the collective feeling.

INTERNATIONAL COMPETITON

A young family struggle to cope with shattering loss in Narcosis, a poetically shot and emotionally rich debut feature from Dutch director Martijn de Jong, which the Netherlands recently submitted to the Academy Awards as its official Best International Feature contender. Serving both a literal and symbolic meaning, the title alludes to nitrogen narcosis, variations in air pressure which can cause numbed senses, hallucination, disorientation and extreme anxiety in deep water divers. Already playing in domestic cinemas, this handsome domestic tragedy makes its international festival premiere in Thessaloniki this week. Strong performances, universal subject matter and potential Oscar buzz should boost art house interest and theatrical potential in wider markets.

In an extensive pre credits sequence that plays more like an opening act than a prologue, de Jong and his screenwriter wife Laura van Dijk sketch out an idyllic family set up. Angular beauty Thekla Reuten (Lost, In Bruges) stars as Merel, a 40 ish mother married to fun loving, thrill seeking charmer John (Fedja van Huêt). This handsome couple

NARCOSIS

VERDICT: A grieving family struggle to move beyond tragedy in Martijn de Jong's poetically filmed debut feature, the official Dutch submission to the Oscars.

Stephen Dalton, November 9, 2022

has a sensitive pre teen skater boy son Boris (Seep Eritrea) and a cherubic younger daughter Ronja (Lola van Zoggel), all living the pastoral dream together in their elegantly shabby chic woodland home.

But a tingle of tension hangs in the air, as John is about to fly off to South Africa for an exploratory diving trip into Boesmansgat, a notoriously deep and perilous freshwater cave that has claimed the lives of many divers. The bottom of this sinkhole is nothing but “beautiful pitch black,” he tells Boris, “the closest you can

get to the centre of the Earth.” When John fails to return, as Merel fears, the darker main section of the story begins.

Most of Narcosis takes place a year later, with the family still coming to terms with John’s loss, their drawn out anguish made worse because no body was ever recovered. Stuck in the denial stage of grief, Merel is also facing financial problems as the legal process of confirming the death for insurance purposes becomes an arduous bureaucratic grind.

Full Review

MEET THE NEIGHBORS

modestly scaled but deftly handled debut feature from Greek British writer director Spiros Jacovides feels like that rare cinematic confection, a culturally specific comedy that could travel widely without losing too much in translation. More festival bookings are assured, with potential for word of mouth crossover success and perhaps even an English language remake.

BLACK STONE

VERDICT: Greek British director Spiros Jacovides transforms an eccentric Athens family's secrets and lies into warm hearted comedy in his prize winning debut feature.

Stephen Dalton, November 14, 2022

An anguished Athenian matriarch goes in search of her missing adult son, and gets way more than she bargained for, in the charming comic fake umentary Black Stone. Newly festooned with multiple prizes following its world premiere at Thessaloniki International Film Festival last week, this

The conceit of Black Stone is that the film crew are making a documentary about the roughly 49,000 “ghosts” employed by the Greek civil service, officially registered government workers who appear to be permanently absent from their posts. This preposterous premise may sound like a contemporary spin on Gogol’s classic satirical novel Dead Souls, but it is reportedly rooted in contemporary reality. Jacovides opens with a montage of empty desks, endlessly ringing phones and baffled co workers, setting up a deadpan tone that owes more to the bittersweet absurdism of Nordic directors like Aki Kaurismäki than to the biting surrealism that has shaped recent Greek cinema. Full Review

AUSTRALIA

UNITED KINGDOM

USA

Screen Queensland announced the appointment of Courtney Gibson as incoming Chief Executive Officer. Ms. Gibson is one of the industry’s most experienced executives, having been CEO of two state screen agencies and held leadership roles with Australian broadcasters and production companies.

Screen Queensland Chair, The Honourable Roslyn Atkinson AO, said she was pleased to welcome such an accomplished screen executive to lead the organisation through its next chapter of growth across film and series production, games development and studio expansion.

Ms Gibson’s past roles include Executive Head of Content Creation and Head of Arts, Entertainment and Comedy at ABC TV, Programming Production Executive at Nine, Commissioning Editor of Documentary at SBS, Director of Programmes at Endemol Australia and Managing Director of Jungle Entertainment, as well as serving as CEO of Screen NSW and the South Australian Film Corporation.

British and Norwegian film industries strengthen ties

The British Film Commission (BFC) and the Norwegian Film Commission (NFC) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), with the aim of enhancing the collaboration between the UK and Norwegian screen industries, as well as facilitating film and high end TV production between the two territories.

Both countries are leading global production hubs for film and high end TV production, playing host to some of the world’s biggest film and TV titles in recent years. In fact, the UK and the Norwegian screen industries are thriving.

Through today’s MoU, the BFC and the NFC seek to encourage greater cultural, commercial and creative exchange between the UK and Norway whilst actively working together to foster opportunities to support inward investment film and high end TV production in both countries. This agreement also highlights the film commissions’ commitment to facilitating a frictionless and film friendly service which supports productions working in both territories.

COLA AWARDS DEC 22 honoring Location Pros

The California On Location Awards honors the best Location professionals in entertainment. This year the Awards Show will be returning to the Hilton Los Angeles in Universal City on December 4, 2022. Brought to you by the FLICS.

SPAIN

ICEX Invest in Spain, in collaboration with Spain Film Commission (SFC), the Spanish Companies in International Audiovisual Production

PROFILM, the Audiovisual Industry Alliance (ALIA) and the Spanish Association of Advertising Producers (APCP) has prepared this guide with valuable information on Spain's business and professional network, which is mainly aimed at the international audiovisual industry.

Download here

Courtney Gibson named CEO of Screen Queensland

FILM FORWARD

A father and son share an emotionally fraught mountain holiday in Retreat, a coming of age drama with disquieting thriller elements and a steady background hum of apocalyptic dread that feels depressingly timely. The feature debut of Swiss writer director Leon Schwitter, this tense two hander riffs on the creepy visual grammar of genre cinema but ultimately opts to stay firmly in the understated art house zone, dropping too many teasingly dark hints that never quite pay off. All the same, this is a meticulously crafted and impressively mature debut from a young film maker still in his twenties, with a suspense heavy plot and universal themes that should help boost its international appeal. It will screen in competition at back to back premieres at both Mar Del Plata and Thessaloniki film festivals over the coming week.

Full Review

RETREAT

VERDICT: A father and son share a tense, creepy mountain holiday in Swiss director Leon Schwitter's minor key but atmospheric debut.

Stephen Dalton, November 4, 2022

FILM FORWARD

BASTARDS

VERDICT: A youthful gathering in a sunny Greek villa becomes an orgy of sex, drugs and violence in this flawed but lively debut feature from director Nikos Pastras. Stephen Dalton, November 14, 2022 A Dionysian orgy of sex, drugs and adolescent self indulgence, Bastards is a steaming hot mess of a movie, jarringly pretentious and fatally in love with itself, but not without stylistic flair and mildly transgressive thrills. A collaborative effort between director Nikos Pastras and a cast of young acting students drawn from Athens Conservatory Drama School, this vibrant ensemble piece is clearly indebted to shock driven, youth focussed directors like Larry Clark, Harmony Korine and Gaspar Noé , but with less purpose or substance than any of them. Fresh from its prize winning premiere at Thessaloniki International Film Festival, Pastras’ overcooked debut feature could grab wider attention, especially from festivals and open minded platforms devoted to pulpy cult cinema. It certainly has sparky energy, swaggering ambition and an attention grabbing finale in its favour.

Bastards take place at a sunny holiday villa in rural Greece, where 10 young wannabe rebels have gathered to escape the adult world Full Review

OUT OF COMPETITION

HOW IS KATIA?

VERDICT: A Ukrainian paramedic wrestles with personal tragedy and public injustice in Christina Tynkevych's powerful, prize winning fiction feature debut.

Stephen Dalton, November 11, 2022

A character driven social protest drama set in modern day Ukraine, documentary maker Christina

Tynkevych’s emotionally wrenching fiction feature debut How is Katia? was shot in Kyiv

before Russia’s bloody invasion, a fateful twist of history that could prove either an asset or a liability to its prospects. On one hand, Ukrainian cinema is enjoying heightened global attention right now, which should give this small but powerful film a welcome boost. Then again, a scalding dissection of ingrained corruption within Ukraine’s medical and legal system is not exactly what an embattled nation and its global supporters will be craving right now.

Fortunately, the points How is Katia? makes about power, money and injustice have pretty wide universal resonance, and could be applied specifically to many other countries.

Full Review

CROSSING BORDERS

IMAN

VERDICT: A Greek Cypriot family fall apart against a backdrop of tragedy, terrorism and racial tension in this glossy thriller from Corinna Avraamidou and Kyriacos Tofarides.

Stephen Dalton, November 10,2022 One of the more enjoyably glossy world premieres unveiled this week at Thessaloniki International Film Festival, Iman is a family in crisis melodrama with punchy thriller elements and a killer plot twist. It was co written and co directed by Cyprus born Corinna Avraamidou, returning to the big screen with just her second feature after after a long stretch of TV work, and Kyriacos Tofarides. Almost all the sun kissed locations here look like seductive promotional photo shoots for the Cypriot tourist board, which makes sense on some level, given that most of the film’s budget came from the island’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports and Youth. It may touch on timely political themes including Islamist terrorism, anti immigrant racism, abortion rights and toxic masculinity, but Iman is a deluxe soap opera at heart, putting a Greek Cypriot spin on the kind of overheated emotions and broadly drawn characters more often seen in Latin American telenovelas. This is not the kind of film that wins festival prizes, but it is polished, pulse racing entertainment featuring glamorous locations and a strikingly attractive cast, which never hurts at the box office. Beyond pretty solid domestic crowd pleasing prospects, the overall high gloss thriller elements could also stir interest outside Greece, with streaming services an obvious potential outlet.

MEET THE NEIGHBORS

The supernatural and the spiritual co exist alongside flinty social realism in Syrian documentary maker Ehab Tarabieh’s debut fiction feature The Taste of Apples is Red, an underpowered but quietly gripping slow burn thriller set in the Golan Heights, that long disputed and heavily occupied border region squeezed between Syria and Israel. Given its location, it is no surprise that cross border tensions and divided political loyalties are woven into this stark family tragedy. But the meat of the plot mostly draws on the director’s native Druze heritage, a religion which borrows ideas from Islam, Judaism and other faiths, notably a strong belief in reincarnation as a divine mechanism for keeping the core number of believers steady: as one community member dies, another is born.

Largely thanks to its cultural and geographical setting, The Taste of Apples is Red is a fascinating prospect at first, even if Tarabieh dampens some very juicy dramatic material with too much low voltage naturalism and slow motion exposition. Full Review

THE TASTE OF APPLES IS RED

VERDICT: Ehab Tarabieh's debut fiction feature is a brooding thriller about long buried family secrets returning to haunt a close knit Druze village in the Golan Heights.

Stephen Dalton, November 10, 2022

CROSSING BORDERS

CAVEWOMAN

VERDICT: Director Spiros Stathoulopoulos reimagines the ancient Greek drama 'Electra' as a World War II revenge thriller in this boldly experimental mix of close up acting and rich sound design.

Stephen Dalton, November 7, 2022

Updating the classic ancient Greek revenge tragedy Electra to a World War II setting, Cavewoman is the first full feature in a decade from Greek Colombian auteur Spiros Stathoulopoulos, and by some distance his most formally experimental work to date. Mostly composed of 24 extended close up shots of a single actor, Greek “Weird Wave” regular Angeliki Papoulia (Dogtooth, Alps, The Lobster), with heavy reliance on sound design as a stand in for visual storytelling, this stylistically bold work is unashamedly a rarefied art house item. The heavily mannered approach jars at times, but there are satisfying rewards here for patient viewers and fans of avant garde theatre, which this production resembles as much as a cinematic drama. World premiering at Thessaloniki International Film Festival this week, this audacious remix of Euripides will likely be limited by its uncompromising style to festival outings and cult movie circles, but with extra potential appeal to literary historians and drama scholars. Full Review

Judit Elek, Yuasa Masaaki, Stanya Kahn, and arc at IFFR 2023

Marrakech International Film Festival Returns

Judit Elek

International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) will celebrate the careers of four radical filmmakers and visual artists at its 52nd edition. Hungarian filmmaker Judit Elek, Japanese animator Yuasa Masaaki, American interdisciplinary artist Stanya Kahn and the long running Bay Area expanded cinema project arc will all be placed in the spotlight with Focus programmes and Talks at IFFR 2023.

Festival director Vanja Kaludjercic: “Our Focus programmes are a chance for us to celebrate the work of filmmakers whose remarkable careers haven’t always been given the attention they deserve. As always we’re committed to looking into unlikely spheres, be it rural documentaries from 1970s People’s Hungary, performance based expanded cinema or wild free form Japanese anime. The unexpected always shines brightly at IFFR.”

IFFR takes place Jan 25 Feb 5, 2023

Muna Moto (L’Enfant d L’Autre)

After 2 years of absence, the Festival will present 76 films in its Selection coming from 33 countries. Paolo Sorrentino's Jury will award the Étoile d'or to one of the 14 films in Competition screened at the Palais des Congrès.

Screenings for Young Audiences at the Cinéma du Colisée, outdoor screenings on the symbolic Jemaa El Fna Square, an audacious program at the Yves Saint Laurent Museum and conversations around cinema.

Marrakesh runs from Nov 11 19.

40th Torino Filmfestival set for November 25

– chaired by Enzo Ghigo and directed by Domenico De Gaetano and with the artistic direction of Steve Della Casa, who, twenty years later, directs the event once again. The 40th edition of the Torino Film Festival marks the return of audiences to the cinemas and the National Cinema Museum has made the strategic choice to concentrate every effort on this aspect.

Click here for program

Global Nonviolent Film Festival Announces 2023 Dates & Opens for Submissions

The 12th edition of the Global Nonviolent Film Festival will run from September 28 to October 8, 2023.

40th Torino Film Festival will take place from November 25 to December 3 under the aegis of the National Cinema Museum.

Submissions are now open on FilmFreeway in the categories narrative film, documentary, docudrama, animation, experimental, and music video. All films submitted must be nonviolent: the Festival does not accept films that showcase explicit or graphic violence; implied acts of violence may be accepted if they are justified by the message of the film.

Click here to submit.

David Grieco, Malcom McDowell, Stteve Della Casa

MARKET WATCH

Nordisk Film & Prime Video Big Deal 2023

Julen I Skomakergata and Bamse and the World’s Smallest Adventure in Sweden. The deal also includes hundreds of library movies and kids titles loved by Nordic customers.

Nordisk Film and Prime Video announced they have closed an exclusive three year output deal in the Nordics starting in 2023. One of the biggest movie deals ever signed in the Nordics, the multi year agreement includes top international and local exclusive movies, as well as hundreds of episodes of kids content and library movies.

“We’re really pleased to announce that we’re launching one of the biggest movie deals ever in the Nordics,” said Andreas Hjertø, Head of Nordic Content, Prime Video. “Nordisk Film has one of the best film distribution and production arms, and are responsible for some of the highest Box Office Films and award winning titles in the region like Another Round, Three Wishes for Cinderella, and Sune and we are so proud that Prime Video will be able to offer all of Nordisk movies to our customers in the Nordics.”

As part of the deal, Prime Video customers in the Nordics will have access to view Nordisk Film’s slate of hundreds of international and Nordic star studded movies, premiering on the service from the fall of 2023 and onwards. Upcoming titles include John Wick: Chapter 4 with Keanu Reeves and Bill Skarsgård, The Hunger Gamesprequel: Ballad of Song Birds and Snakes, and The Fabelmans by Steven Spielberg. Nordic titles include; Danish film Hunting Season 2, and Kysset (The Kiss) as well as the popular Norwegian family title Den Första

”We are very excited to enter into this new deal with Prime Video in the Nordic. Prime Video is a top tier streaming service offering great content, and we are thrilled that Amazon has decided to boost its Nordic presence, and that Nordisk Film can be a part of that journey,” said Kenneth Wiberg, Senior Vice President, Nordisk “Nordisk Film Distribution continues to develop, acquire, and distribute the best international and the most anticipated local language feature films throughout Nordics. And with this new and very exciting deal, we underline our position as the market frontrunner when it comes to attractive content and groundbreaking distribution partnerships. Our new deal with Prime Video will strengthen our position as Scandinavia’s top content powerhouse.”

Palace Film’s Saint Omer earns Double Nomination for Louis Delluc Prize

Saint Omer 2022 kudos already include:

Kenneth Wiberg photo by Klaus Rubæk

French Oscar submission Saint Omer by Alice Diop has earned a double nomination for France’s prestigious Louis Delluc prize in both the best feature and best first film categories.