Discover the film festival that has all bases… | Little White Lies

Festivals

Dis­cov­er the film fes­ti­val that has all bases covered

02 Nov 2021

A woman in a red floral dress stands in a snowy landscape.
A woman in a red floral dress stands in a snowy landscape.
The Thes­sa­loni­ki Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val offers a mod­el for how mod­ern fes­ti­vals could and should be operating.

While the glob­al film fes­ti­val cir­cuit is dom­i­nat­ed by big play­ers includ­ing Cannes, Venice, Toron­to and Sun­dance, any self-respect­ing cinephile will tell you that beyond the inter­na­tion­al echo cham­ber there’s a pletho­ra of amaz­ing home­grown events which seek to cel­e­brate the best in upcom­ing cin­e­ma talent.

As we slow­ly learn to nav­i­gate the world in light of the pan­dem­ic, which tem­porar­i­ly changed the way we engage with visu­al cul­ture, it’s per­haps more impor­tant than ever to show sup­port for local film fes­ti­vals which bring cin­e­ma to audi­ences beyond the rat­i­fied world of the industry”.

Not only do these events offer a vital oppor­tu­ni­ty to catch up on some much-laud­ed titles, they present plen­ty of pos­si­bil­i­ties for dis­cov­er­ing local tal­ent or redis­cov­er­ing a less­er-seen clas­sic. One such fes­ti­val, with a keen eye on expan­sive pro­gram­ming and bring­ing the very best in glob­al cin­e­ma to a local audi­ence, is the Thes­sa­loni­ki Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val, now in its 62nd year.

The fes­ti­val takes place in the pic­turesque Gre­cian port city from the 4th to the 14th of Novem­ber, open­ing with Audrey Diwan’s sear­ing abor­tion dra­ma Hap­pen­ing – which won the Gold­en Lion at this year’s Venice Film Fes­ti­val – and clos­ing with Jacques Audiard’s crit­i­cal­ly-acclaimed graph­ic nov­el adap­ta­tion, Paris, 13th District.

There’s also a strong focus on sup­port­ing local cin­e­ma, with 35 full-length and 15 short Greek films play­ing through­out the fes­ti­val, 20 of which receiv­ing their world pre­mière. Thes­sa­loni­ki also offers guests and patrons an oppor­tu­ni­ty to catch a selec­tion of clas­sic Greek cin­e­ma in its Moth­er­land I See You’ strand, fea­tur­ing Dim­itris Gaziadis’ 1929 romance Astero and Theo Angelopou­los’ sprawl­ing 1975 mas­ter­piece The Trav­el­ling Play­ers, as well as offer­ing a unique Cross­ing Bor­ders’ selec­tion fea­tur­ing Greek film­mak­ers work­ing out­side of their home country.

Else­where, the First Run’ sec­tion gives 16 Greek films or co-pro­duc­tions their pre­mière, while a spe­cial spot­light pro­gramme pays trib­ute to visu­al artist Loukia Ala­vanou, who found­ed Greece’s first VR pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny and will rep­re­sent the coun­try at next year’s Venice Bien­nale. Thes­sa­loni­ki, then, oper­ates as both a cel­e­bra­tor of exist­ing tal­ent and an incu­ba­tor for new talent.

The fes­ti­val also cel­e­brates cin­e­ma from the local region more wide­ly with its Balkan Sur­vey’ strand, fea­tur­ing Ana­to­lian Leop­ard by Emre Kayis, which recent­ly played at the Toron­to Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val, and a spe­cial trib­ute to pio­neer­ing Bul­gar­i­an film­mak­er Bin­ka Zhelyazko­va, the first woman from her coun­try to direct a fea­ture film and one of the few female film­mak­ers work­ing world­wide in the 1950s. Eight of her films, along with a doc­u­men­tary on her life and work, will be avail­able to watch both online and in per­son, cel­e­brat­ing a tru­ly inno­v­a­tive filmmaker.

Woman operating film camera in outdoor, natural setting.

One of the most inter­est­ing ele­ments of Thessaloniki’s robust pro­gramme is its Uni­ver­sal­ly Acces­si­ble View­ings, pre­sent­ing two fea­tures with audio descrip­tion and open cap­tions for the deaf and hard of hear­ing. Often­times cin­e­ma lovers with dis­abil­i­ties are side­lined by film fes­ti­vals, so it’s refresh­ing to see a fes­ti­val com­mit­ted to mak­ing acces­si­bil­i­ty part of its cen­tral remit.

And of course there are plen­ty of famil­iar names too: a jam-packed main pro­gramme show­cas­es fes­ti­val favourites includ­ing Paul Verhoevan’s Benedet­ta, Rysuke Hamaguchi’s Dri­ve My Car, Jane Campion’s The Pow­er of the Dog, Joan­na Hogg’s The Sou­venir Part II and Nin­ja Thyberg’s porn dra­ma Plea­sure, to name just a hand­ful of titles, giv­ing audi­ences the chance to catch up on plen­ty of high­ly-antic­i­pat­ed titles from around the world. For thrill seek­ers, there’s the Round Mid­night’ sec­tion, fea­tur­ing some of the best genre picks from this year, includ­ing Jean-Christophe Meurisse’s Bloody Oranges and Ste­fan Ruzowitzsky’s Hinterland.

As for the main com­pe­ti­tion, there’s even more great titles to dis­cov­er, includ­ing Nathalie Alvarez Mesen’s Clara Sola, Alexan­dre Koberidze’s What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? and Har­ry Wootliff’s True Things, while the Film For­ward pro­gramme includes Jane Schoebrun’s cult Sun­dance break­out We’re All Going to the World’s Fair along­side Miguel Gomes and Mau­reen Fazendeiro’s The Tsug­ua Diaries and Michelan­ge­lo Frammartino’s Il Buco, which both play out of competition.

This year Thes­sa­loni­ki also encour­ages view­ers to focus on an art­form often over­looked in film­mak­ing – the Focus on Edit­ing’ pro­gramme spans from Alain Resnais’ Muriel, or the Time of Return through to Steven Soderbergh’s Out of Sight, and will be pre­sent­ed along­side a cel­e­bra­tion of top-notch Greek and for­eign edi­tors work­ing today, includ­ing Yor­gos Mavrop­saridis (who received an Oscar nom­i­na­tion for his work on Yor­gos Lanthimos’s The Favourite).

It’s clear that the pro­gram­ming team behind Thes­sa­loni­ki have put in a mam­moth effort to bring togeth­er this amaz­ing selec­tion of films, from fes­ti­val win­ners to home­town heroes, all in one of the most idyl­lic set­tings for a film fes­ti­val. Cou­pled with TIFF’s exten­sive online offer­ing, view­ers from across Greece will be able to enjoy 10 days of world-lead­ing cin­e­ma. There’s nev­er been a bet­ter time to get stuck into the Thes­sa­loni­ki Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val – and don’t for­get, the city’s doc­u­men­tary fes­ti­val fol­lows in March, mak­ing this a must-vis­it des­ti­na­tion for any film enthu­si­asts look­ing for a fes­ti­val with a view.

The Thes­sa­loni­ki Film Fes­ti­val runs from 4 – 14 Novem­ber. For more infor­ma­tion vis­it film​fes​ti​val​.gr

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