Discoveries from Greece World Cinema

The end shows empathy to none.

A painting workshop brings six people closer to art. Their living conditions lead them to seek a way out through this activity, even though they cannot share their works with the audience. A narrator who has gone through the same experiences accompanies the images and sounds that populate a six-week journey, until the moment his works are completed.

The shooting in the Gypsy camp of Heraklion, Crete, that lasted many years, reveals the story of the biggest family, as well as the personality of its legendary patriarch, who at a very young age managed to get educated and integrated into the urban framework, but finally lost everything because of the stereotypes of his own community.

A film recovered showing two women kissing, accompanied by a Greek folk song.

Of the thirty inhabitants of Arki, a windswept island in Greece’s Dodecanese, Kristos is the last remaining child. He is ten, and he is the only pupil of his teacher Maria. Kristos will start his final year of elementary school soon. To finish compulsory education, he needs to leave Arki and move to a larger island.

An urban romance about the life of a lively young lady who has shaken off conventional female modesty, provoking her social circle.

A group of women residents of Cοlonos and Plato Academy in Athens decided along with local writer Thanasis Skroubelos and film director Kate Bello to break the silence. Five women’s monologues, five perspectives of rape.

An exploration right under our noses. A city adventure. A latent heroic figure. A carving in the heavens. A meal on the antennae. An awakening lullaby. A take off game. A jumbled urban narrative. The film was made in the context of the 5th Panorama Film School of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki with the theme DEACTIVATION.

Vasiliki, a first-year student with social anxiety disorder, moves to her place of study. The sudden change in her environment isolates her from her surroundings and brings her face to face with her problem. With the help of social media, she will try to overcome the obstacles created by her anxiety and to join the social context of her new life. The events are narrated mainly through her cell phone, which mirrors her mental world and reveals what she herself cannot say. The film was made in the context of the 5th Panorama Film School of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki with the theme DEACTIVATION.

1000+1 days after the outbreak of a pandemic, a group of strangers are forced to live together and establish a fake company STUDIO TATH. Through it they deliver online daily classes and performances, where they try to convince the audience and themselves that every day is Monday and they will finally manage to live a normality. The film was made in the context of the 5th Panorama Film School of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki with the theme DEACTIVATION.

In Traum we follow a woman as she closes her eyes and lets herself be lost in the dream. The film was made in the context of the 5th Panorama Film School of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki with the theme DEACTIVATION.

Our idea was based on the disabling of our five senses in today's society. In the first scene our hero waits at the bus stop looking indifferently at his cell phone as time passes and then returns home where he mechanically turns on the television and passively watches a blank screen. Then in a grocery store the heroine mechanically puts the products in her bag without listening. Then our hero watches a teleconference and by the end of it he has not heard anything of what was said, while then being hungry he warms up and "eats" water. At the same time, our heroine is walking down the street and as she looks up she fearfully notices that everyone around her is wearing a headscarf and can't see. Finally, the heroine who has been watering a flower pot on her balcony for days discovers how the flower inside is made of paper. The film was made in the context of the 5th Panorama Film School of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki with the theme DEACTIVATION.

The four people who act artistically and are presented are: Karma Queen, Amelie Tea, Aurora Paola Morado and Dr. Ogle Boss, which describe what it’s like to be a Drag Queen-King in the second largest city of Greece. The video consists of interviews and scenes from the Drag artists’ performances, the problems they face, but also how liberating it is to express themselves through drag. Shots of the city complement the social environment.

It’s summer in Egaleo. We observe a group of homeless people and the social injustices they experience. Maria is homeless and is looking for ways to escape her situation. Giannis recalls his past as a captain. He narrates his memories sailing from port to port, while he wanders from dumpster to dumpster.

An absurd movie about a ballerina who doesn't eat

A young woman makes a sandwich.

the first and only film directed by Takis Antonopoulos

The story revolves around a teenage girl who is dealing with life via her diary entries. She observes and analyzes a classmate’s bad behavior because it symbolizes everything that she does not want to be. As the girl grows up the memories of her classmate become the version of herself that she doesn’t want to face.

Women in the political and social struggles of the 20th century, in the battle for survival, on the path of prison, exile and the firing squad. Punished for their struggle for a better life, for their struggle against the occupiers, for their struggle for national independence and Democracy.

This film is based on documentary material but is not, strictly speaking, a documentary film. Nor is it a work of fiction. The film appears to us rather as a dream, not a night dream, but a dream that took place day after day during the shooting.

A girl trying to cope with the death of her friend.

The material of the Newspaper becomes an occasion for a choreographic research on how to create a performance which will be addressed to the young audience (2-5years old). Movement, improvisation, symbolic play and sounds create a world of alternating images and successive transformations of this malleable and ephemeral everyday object.

Marina, a young woman with disabilities, takes part in a video conference, during which she talks to John, a “different” racially student. The “demon” of the internet, however, prevents them from seeing their visual “social” peculiarities. In the appointment they later arrange, they are recognized, surprised and flee, terrified by the “social” and racial, unknown that they meet and refuse to accept, despite the public image that they both want to present.

A young couple in love embracing and kissing for the first time.

Mr. Tasos, a 68 year old, rebuilt the house of his childhood memories, in a small village that was destroyed collectively by its own residents in the late ‘60s. A short documentary about memory, the passage of time and regret.

A documentary about the most distinctive Athenian building type, the polykatoikía, and the reconstruction of the city through the life of the anonymous regular builders. Who were the provincials who came to Athens with their wives after the Civil War and ‘cemented’ the city? Who ‘demolished’ the neoclassical buildings and filled Athens with apartment buildings? Ηow did they learn and develop their craft? How did they communicate and negotiate with the architects, the ‘educated’? In other words, what was the story of their encounter with the ‘project of modernity’? The documentary is based on Ioanna Theocharopoulou’s book sharing the same title, revised and published in 2021 by the Onassis Foundation.

A short film that records the presence and absence of various forms of life, matter and activity inside and around the Lazaretto building on Syros.

Staring at a butterfly trapped in a jar, a boy ponders over the balance between protection and freedom.

The Greek writer Gregorios Xenopoulos recollects a special day in his childhood when he met a beautiful young woman named Athanasia, while spending his days at his aunt's house. That woman was meant to stay in his mind forever and serve as his muse.

At dawn, a group of friends meet on the rooftop of a school in Athens. It's their ritual. Overlooking the city, this symbolic place will be theirs until the next morning.

This independently-produced documentary focuses on the life of Andreas Papandreou, one of Europe’s most controversial leaders. In doing so it attempts to address the pitfalls of charismatic leadership and the limits of democratic politics under a system of economic globalization.

a short film made as a one day diary. Framed in Perama, Piraeus.

Romaniotes: the distinct Greek-Jewish community in the city of Ioannina, with customs and traditions that differ from those of the Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews, whose traces are lost in the depths of time. The Romaniotes became an integral part of the cultural mosaic of the city of Ioannina since the Byzantine era, but faced the danger of extinction during the harsh period of the Second World War. Narrating their history through time unfolds not only the story of the city, but of the whole country by and large.

VICE presents a documentary film about Service Dogs in Greece featuring personal stories of people who have identified their lives with these four-legged companions. We get a glimpse of these precious dogs’ life, training and work through the words of Elena Palanga, the only certified trainer in the country, 8-year-old Giorgos and his service dog, Mike, as well as the testimonies of people who suffer from dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.

The documentary captures the struggle of 320 unpaid seamen of NEL Lines, one of Greece’s most historic maritime companies, in 2015. With many trapped in the company’s vessels in Drapetsona, a part of the Piraeus port, and away from the spotlight, the camera captures their efforts to receive their wages for 7 months during the most critical times in Greece’s modern history. To this day they have received less than half of the wages owed to them and their case is still before the court of appeal.

Α political and poetic visual essay about the passion of recording that is central to the way we experience and interpret the contemporary world. The movie is organized around a text as a personal journey of associations through the city and its people highlighting different sides of the recording experience, while denouncing sarcastically what it – at the same time – venerates and is ardently drawn to.

Bardul is a hardworking Albanian immigrant living in Greece, a typical man-next-door. He is so hardworking, that he ends up sleeping very little, and even on his way from one job to the next. We follow him from dawn till midnight, in his sleep and his awake. We follow his labors, we travel to his places until reality is mixed with his dreams. Identities alternate, whereas different becomes the norm – and vice versa. Where is he considered a foreigner and where is he considered a local?

Set against the backdrop of the Rohingyan humanitarian crisis in Bangladesh, the documentary follows Nicholas Papachrysostomou in his role as the head of the Médecins Sans Frontières emergency response. Drawing on his personal thoughts, as recorded in his personal Diaries from the field, the main character hero attempts to decipher the personal choices that led him from the world of multinational companies to emergency humanitarian action.