Ani­mal instincts at the Thes­sa­loni­ki Inter­na­tion­al Doc­u­men­tary Festival

If you want peo­ple to watch your doc­u­men­tary, there’s a sure-fire way to intice them: make it about a cute ani­mal. Across lan­guages and bor­ders a love of crea­ture com­forts endures, and even when docs choose to focus on the dark­er side of our rela­tion­ship with nature – à la Wern­er Herzog’s Griz­zly Man – the very promise of hear­ing a sto­ry about a unique rela­tion­ship between man and beast is enough to lure view­ers in. While perus­ing the pro­gramme for this year’s Thes­sa­loni­ki Inter­na­tion­al Doc­u­men­tary Fes­ti­val, this thought occurred to me as I came across the list­ing for Pan­golin: Kulu’s Jour­ney, direct­ed by Pip­pa Ehrlich who won the Oscar for Best Doc­u­men­tary along­side James Reed in 2020 for My Octo­pus Teacher. Giv­en that Greece itself is a haven for cats, I had ani­mals on the mind by the time I arrived in the city for the fes­ti­val. Notic­ing quite a few dif­fer­ent ani­mal-cen­tric docs in the pro­gramme, I thought this might be an inter­est­ing line of enquiry to fol­low for the four days I was in town.

I began with the afore­men­tioned Pan­golin: Kulu’s Jour­ney, which cen­ters – unsur­pris­ing­ly – on a tiny pan­golin who is res­cued dur­ing a sting oper­a­tion to take down an ani­mal traf­fick­er. Pan­golins are con­sid­ered the world’s most traf­ficked ani­mal, account­ing for 20% of the ille­gal wildlife trade, which is par­tic­u­lar­ly heart­break­ing when you see one on screen. They are strange, alien-look­ing mam­mals, cov­ered in scales with long, thin tongues and short arms. Pan­golins are also bipedal, and many inter­net users have remarked how polite they look. The crea­tures are not helped, wildlife vol­un­teer Gareth Thomas explains, by their lack of sur­vival skills beyond being able to defen­sive­ly curl into a ball; they have poor eye­sight and no teeth. As such, when Kulu is res­cued, it falls to Thomas to become his around-the-clock babysit­ter at a South African nature reserve until he’s big enough to be released into the wild.

Any­one who has watched an ani­mal doc­u­men­tary before will be famil­iar with the for­mat of Kulu’s Jour­ney, which brings very lit­tle to the table styl­is­ti­cal­ly but plen­ty in the way of cute footage of a pan­golin bum­bling around the grass­lands and bathing in mud. If the documentary’s aim is to bring aware­ness to the plight of the pan­golin, it absolute­ly suc­ceeds – Kulu is an endear­ing pro­tag­o­nist, and Thomas (a macho city escapee trans­formed into a sen­si­tive zookeep­er by his con­nec­tion with Kulu) a ser­vi­ca­ble human coun­ter­point, but it’s very much in the same vain as My Octo­pus Teacher, and it’s easy to under­stand why some film­mak­ers may find the con­tin­ued over-rep­re­sen­ta­tion of such straight-for­ward sto­ry­telling – with an over­re­liance on cute crea­tures – frustrating.

But the ani­mal action at Thes­sa­loni­ki also took some inter­est­ing turns. Tomáš Elšík’s Pri zemi (Resilience) focus­es on an idyl­lic stretch of the Czech coun­try­side where the wildlife has start­ed to mys­te­ri­ous­ly die. While local gar­den­er Pavel tries to sew seeds to fight ram­pant defor­esta­tion, Klára (who works with the Czech Ornitho­log­i­cal Soci­ety) tries to work out the cause of the bird deaths with help from her dogs. It’s a dif­fer­ent sort of mur­der mys­tery, in which the sweep­ing vis­tas of the Czech land­scape con­trast with the image of trag­i­cal­ly felled wildlife and the seem­ing­ly end­less bat­tle Pavel and Klára are fight­ing against industrialisation.

The kid-friend­ly Salto, Pus og den døde fisken (Small Dogs Bark Loud) by Nora Nivedi­ta Tvedt takes a dras­ti­cal­ly dif­fer­ent approach, giv­ing an imag­ined voice to its canine (and feline) char­ac­ters, chiefly Salto, the sweet Mal­tese who is the best friend of 12-year-old Tuni. Still griev­ing fol­low­ing the sui­cide of her old­er broth­er and strug­gling with her mother’s ter­mi­nal can­cer diag­no­sis, Tuni has devel­oped a mag­i­cal bond with Salto, and she puts togeth­er a sum­mer buck­et list for them to accom­plish, with one big task at the end of it: vis­it­ing her broth­er Håkon’s grave. The chirpy V/O for Salto can be a lit­tle grat­ing, but the con­ceit is quite nov­el, par­tic­u­lar­ly for younger audi­ences who might oth­er­wise not be exposed to doc­u­men­tary, and Small Dogs Bark Loud is a sen­si­tive approach to the top­ic of grief that might well help oth­er chil­dren expe­ri­enc­ing sim­i­lar changes. It’s also a tes­ta­ment to the incred­i­ble pow­er of pets with­in our lives, par­tic­u­lar­ly in times of crisis.

Span­ish film­mak­er Emilio Fon­se­ca Martín rejects the tra­di­tion­al trap­pings in Wild, Wild, which explores the exis­tence and absence of Iber­ian wolves in Gali­cia and Por­tu­gal through stun­ning imagery and the incor­po­ra­tion of folk his­to­ry, med­i­tat­ing on what is lost with the relent­less march of time and so-called progress. The wolves’ dis­tant cousins appear in the most con­ven­tion­al but still eerie Pet Farm, in which Finn and Mar­tin Walther spend time with Joakim in rur­al Nor­way, who has been chas­ing his child­hood dream of breed­ing domes­ti­cat­ed fox­es. What starts as a harm­less sto­ry about a quirky ani­mal lover is revealed to be root­ed in lone­li­ness and iso­la­tion, as Joakim reveals just how much his fox­es mean to him while the Nor­we­gian gov­ern­ment seeks to shut him down and cull his animals.

The ten­sions between humans and ani­mals are also on dis­play in Eliza Petkova’s Silent Observers, where six ani­mals in the moun­tain vil­lage of Pirin take cen­tre stage amid the community’s super­sti­tions and domes­tic demands. Mat­sa the cat is accused of pre­vent­ing a dead man’s soul from pass­ing over; Gosho the horse is sick and risks euthana­sia; Mila the dog is accused of mur­der­ing a neighbour’s chick­ens. It’s an engag­ing and humor­ous hybrid doc that encour­ages the audi­ence to con­nect with the ani­mals on screen rather than the humans.

Of course the TIDF pro­gramme had plen­ty of human sto­ries on show – I was par­tic­u­lar­ly impressed by Matyl­da Kawka’s My Sun­ny­side, which cen­ters on Jo and Allie, a trans cou­ple liv­ing in New York who nav­i­gate their rela­tion­ship amid famil­ial ten­sions and the exter­nal pres­sures that come with being queer in present-day Amer­i­ca. It’s a sen­si­tive and sim­ple film that spot­lights a com­mu­ni­ty con­tin­u­al­ly scape­goat­ed both in the Unit­ed States and in the Unit­ed King­dom, care­ful­ly find­ing plen­ty of joy among the dif­fi­cul­ties in Jo and Allie’s lives. Anoth­er sto­ry of Amer­i­cans on the mar­gins, Jean-Bap­tiste Thoret’s Neon Peo­ple, reveals the com­mu­ni­ty of unhoused peo­ple that exist beneath the Las Vegas strip, liv­ing in access tun­nels. It’s a can­did and mat­ter-of-fact film that allows the res­i­dents to speak plain­ly about their expe­ri­ences and the aban­don­ment of them by the state.

Mean­while, the fes­ti­val paid trib­ute to French doc­u­men­tar­i­an Nico­las Philib­ert with a ret­ro­spec­tive that includ­ed screen­ings of On the Ada­ment and At Aver­roès & Rosa Parks, as well as the third and final instal­ment in his tril­o­gy explor­ing alter­na­tive psy­chi­atric treat­ment in Paris, The Type­writer and Oth­er Headaches. In this third film, Philib­ert fol­lows two handy­men employed to assis­tant patients with var­i­ous prob­lems, such as bro­ken type­writ­ers and CD play­ers and clean­ing up a dis­or­gan­ised flat. Philibert’s nat­u­ral­is­tic film­mak­ing and sense for comedic tim­ing are on show once again here; it’s a touch­ing and gen­tle film about the impor­tance of a holis­tic and com­mu­ni­ty-focused approach to men­tal health.

While cute ani­mal pro­tag­o­nists might some­times prove enough to shift tick­ets, it takes a skilled film­mak­er to real­ly make us invest in their art. Thessaloniki’s 2025 pro­gramme was not short of those, packed with gems of both the ani­mal and human vari­ety, with plen­ty of film­mak­ers keen to reach beyond the clichés of genre and find new modes of expression.

The 27^th Thes­sa­loni­ki Inter­na­tion­al Doc­u­men­tary Fes­ti­val took place from 6 to 16 March. The Thes­sa­loni­ki Film Fes­ti­val will take place lat­er this year.