Greek Cin­e­ma Now: A Post­card from the Thes­sa­loni­ki Film Festival

How does one take the tem­per­a­ture of a nation­al cin­e­ma? In a year when Greek direc­tors like Yor­gos Lan­thi­mos, Athi­na Rachel Tsan­gari and Alexan­dro Avranas popped up on the fes­ti­val cir­cuit with films shot in lan­guages oth­er than their native one, it feels fit­ting to bet on a home­com­ing and look for the answer to this elu­sive ques­tion at Greece’s largest and most pres­ti­geous film festival.

Nest­ed by the shores of the Aegean Sea and with a sprawl­ing beach offer­ing clear views of Mount Olym­pus, Thes­sa­loni­ki is a city built upon human resilience and the merg­ing of dif­fer­ent cul­tures. The old docks that now house the city’s Muse­um of Cin­e­ma and the Thes­sa­loni­ki Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val were once one of the first sights of Jew­ish peo­ple escap­ing the war – a haven for those in search of free­dom. As one walks by the har­bour in between the festival’s many screen­ings, it’s hard not to think of art as a tool of empa­thy and a shared language.

So, despite the festival’s boun­ti­ful crop of Greek fea­tures this year — 22 in total, spread across many pro­grammes — two sec­tions feel par­tic­u­lar­ly deserv­ing of a prop­er rum­mage to get a deep­er under­stand­ing of the cur­rent state of Greek film­mak­ing: Meet the Neigh­bors, com­pris­ing first or sec­ond fea­tures from Greece’s neigh­bour­hood of South­east­ern Europe, the Mediter­ranean and the Mid­dle East and »Film For­ward, prod­ding at the work of film­mak­ers chal­leng­ing our real­i­ty and the con­ven­tions of genre.

Chris­tos Pitharas’s sopho­more nar­ra­tive fea­ture Hunt, and Daniel Bolda’s Mal­dives cen­tre around the rela­tion­ship between lone­ly men and dogs. The for­mer, a tense dra­ma shot in a tight 4:3 ratio, finds hunter Yan­nis (Yan­nis Belis) look­ing for some peace and qui­et fol­low­ing the death of his moth­er and the over­whelm­ing bureau­cra­cy that suc­ceeds it. Instead, he gets a loud next-door neigh­bour whose neglect­ed dog barks day and night. The lat­ter trails an ele­men­tary music teacher in a small moun­tain­side town who begins to ques­tion his san­i­ty once the sor­row com­ing from the dis­ap­pear­ance of his beloved dog brings forth eerie visions of the afterlife.

Both films are infused with a stark sense of how lone­li­ness slith­ers through com­mu­ni­ty as a qui­et, treach­er­ous snake. The two men have their metic­u­lous­ly curat­ed rou­tines inter­rupt­ed by the sud­den loss of a last remain­ing tie to polite soci­ety, some­what find­ing a twist­ed, prim­i­tive kind of free­dom amongst the heav­i­ness of their grief. While Pitha­ras roots his terse — both in run­time and pac­ing — thriller in a high­ly effec­tive, tan­gi­ble real­i­ty that ampli­fies Yannis’s descent into vio­lence, Bol­da taps into mag­i­cal real­ism to play with notions of the real and the dream­like, see­saw­ing between the nos­tal­gic com­mon ground of a class­room and the law­less, uncan­ny cor­ners of the forest.

If Hunt and Mal­dives pro­vide fod­der for qui­et, mov­ing intro­spec­tion, Chris­tos Massalas’s Killer­wood and Alexan­dros Tsilifonis’s CAFÉ 404 walk in the oppo­site direc­tion. These two come­dies, although stark­ly dif­fer­ing in tone and earnest­ness, par­o­dy well-estab­lished beats: Killer­wood takes a stab at both the clas­sic behind-the-scenes mock­u­men­tary and true crime soaps and CAFÉ 404 plays with the all-Amer­i­can trope of a night of esca­lat­ing chaos at a road­side diner.

Massalas’s satire fol­lows a film crew dur­ing prep for a thriller inves­ti­gat­ing a series of unsolved mur­ders in mod­ern-day Athens and strikes just the right dose of sar­casm with a healthy pinch of self-aware­ness, hand­ing out throw­away digs at how Greek film­mak­ers wor­ship at the altar of Lan­thi­mos while paint­ing an amus­ing car­i­ca­ture of the over-pre­oc­cu­pied mil­len­ni­al wannabe auteur. CAFÉ 404 is rougher-around-the-edges, a spoofy action thriller about a young man who, hop­ing to keep the doors of the tit­u­lar café open, is dan­ger­ous­ly tempt­ed by a mys­te­ri­ous bag.

There’s a sense of play­ful­ness to both films that is wel­come even when mis­guid­ed, their con­tain­ment allow­ing for the kind of risk-tak­ing that speaks direct­ly to the joys and pos­si­bil­i­ties of film­mak­ing and thus feeds into our open­ing ques­tion. What is Greek cin­e­ma look­ing like these days? Leav­ing Thes­sa­loni­ki, the answer is less a def­i­n­i­tion and more a feel­ing, and a very good one at that.

The 2024 Thes­sa­loni­ki Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val ran from 31 Oct to 10 Nov 2024.