Discoveries from Greece World Cinema

The story of two young people who want to get engaged, but something always keeps happening to them and the ceremony is constantly put off. All this takes place through a series of humorous incidents.

Lost in the thick fog of a freezing night, about ten followers of Satan, delirious with ecstasy, glorify Ahriman. The Witch completes the macabre ritual, sacrificing a sixteen-year-old girl to the Lord of Darkness and invites him to come to their Sabbath party. The Goat of Mendes inexplicably and mysteriously appears among them and the Satanists, in a state of frenzied paranoia, surrender to a delirium of insanity. Suddenly, the Holy Inquisitor, accompanied by a group of soldiers, interrupts the satanic ritual, arrests the Witch and tortures her until she confesses that she is a heretic and a follower of Satan.

The film documents the consequences of the Turkish invasion of 1974, focusing on displaced refugees, population exchanges, and the role of foreign interests in Cyprus’s internal affairs.

Idomeni, in 2016; In this small village on the Greek-Macedonian border, an old lady recounts stories about locals who crossed the borderline and never came back. While her narrations reconstruct the History of the border, some Palestinians from Syria, living in the refugee settlement that has been built right next to the village, decide to set up a kindergarten. Thus, instead of waiting passively for the border to open, they exist in the present, they envision the future and they create conditions that bring them closer to a feeling of a home.

Within the assertive climate of the years after the restoration of democracy in 1974, a fringe group, the blind, many of them beggars, protested by demanding Bread and Education and not Beggary.

Late in the winter of 2018, a handful of wandering snowboarders decided to establish the first ever igloo village in Greece, on Mt Vasilitsa in the Pindos Mountain range. After 2 weeks of abstract weather shifts, bear and fox visits and lots of burnt snowboard boots, this nomadic group was left with nothing but soaking socks and swollen faces. Oh... and good times.

A surreal, anarchic and plotless movie about a man who tries to take up his dead father's business, taking aim against contemporary Greek reality. Banned by the Greek dictatorship.

One snowy night two friends who were “troublemakers”, get close to trouble as they end up looking for food at Barba Kostas’ house. On this cold and lonely winter, Barba Kostas is really unhappy and completely devoid of Christmas mood…

Woman or man? Man or woman? A dipole inextricably linked to the human condition. A dipole that, however, seems incapable of expressing the diversity of gender identity.

Playing with Fire is a documentary about the actresses in Afghanistan who are courageous enough to be involved with theater arts and find themselves facing harsh criticism, social disapproval and even threats about their lives and the lives of their families. Acting has even caused a girl's death in Kabul and many young actresses have been forced to flee the country. Anneta Papathanassou, actress and director from Greece, visits Kabul to teach ancient Greek theater and record the lives of Afghan artists, who try to combine art and culture under very difficult circumstances in this troubled country.

Athens 2020 - Holy Saturday - Somewhere in Kipseli. A trans woman is forced to live confined and isolated in a haunted apartment following a government order for mandatory quarantine. The night before Easter Sunday, the televised speech of a scientist about the pandemic will cause her final battle with the ghosts of the past.

‘Each person we meet in the course of our life is a journey and we often feel the need to travel with them first class or without luggage and empty pockets’. Alekos Zoukas is a darling man, fun-loving and at the same time a deep thinker. A man you can’t forget once you meet him. In the film, the travels of the director with Alekos Zoukas and his friends to Pirsogianni alternate with Alekos’ confessions about his experience with cancer. A tribute to friendship by a sinful angel…

The film is focusing on two self organized pedagogical preschool projects in Greece based on the values of libertarian education and experiential learning.

This is the first Greek documentary about disposable plastics, the pollution they cause in Greek seas and the efforts for their gradual abolition.

Tzimis Panousis' highly controversial "My Country's Flag"

The history of the ancient neighborhood of Colonus in Athens, by a novelist and script writer who lives in modern-day Kolonos.

The Greek guest workers -gästarbeiter- in the industrially developed central and northern Europe in the mid 70s.

During the Great Coronavirus Quarantine of the 21st Century, Queen Elizabeth asks everyone to stay inside. A young and joyful princess in her castle tries to do her best, before going depressed, while she has stayed all alone.

The state and business corruption in Greece that enriches by the metal recycling at the expense of a social margin which, while implementing the recycling, lives in extreme deprivation.

In December 1945, 150 Greek students embarked upon a journey to Paris on a ship named “Mataroa.” Their escape from war-torn Greece was transformed into creative expression, impacting the intellectual and artistic developments of postwar Europe. The journey of “Mataroa.” A story that remains a source of inspiration to this day.

A lesbian couple are living in a apartment in the center of Athens, Greece. At the doubly apartment is living a man 40 years old. This view - this lesbian couple - is a sick "picture". Not normal. He doesn't liked to live in the same place with a homosexual couple. So - What is normal and what is abnormal? A short movie based on the "corrective rape".

In the Thessaloniki area, a poor family experiences a similar drama when Electra urges Orestes to kill their mother, not because she killed their father, but because she herself desires Aegisthus. Subsequently, the two siblings become lovers and catharsis never comes.

The film describes the martyrdom of Giannoulis Halepas in his attempt to discover new forms of expression and to render the new era with his own plastic techniques. The film reflects the struggle of the artist who seeks to breathe life into clay and sacrifices himself for this purpose... He entered the Tartarus of the earth to forget what he knew and learn what he did not know—the mysteries of Divine Will...to learn how matter becomes spirit, and he returned to our world to reveal Divine Harmony to us.

“Koursal” was the name of the only cinema in the world that ever operated on a sailing ship on the beach at Thessaloniki during the inter-war years. The search for specific data surrounding the mythic cinema becomes an anguished quest as it disappears into a misty landscape through which, over the space of approximately one hundred years, other facets of the city emerge – facets which official history defiantly ignores…

A man is painting a landscape. A woman is holding two cups. What can go wrong? A nightmare in pink.

The voices of Zak Kostopoulo's community in a film about her, life and the after. This is Right: Zak, Life and After is a portrait of Zak Kostopoulos, a well-known queer AIDS activist who was publicly lynched to death in Athens in 2018. Zak's chosen family and community highlight Zak's activist life and the response that his murder has galvanized. Commissioned by Visual AIDS in 2020 as part of TRANSMISSIONS, a program of six new videos considering the impact of HIV and AIDS beyond the United States.

A man and a woman trapped in a basement. An oblique look at Genesis 19.

It’s night. A young man steals a car that stops outside a drug store. In the back seat there is a young woman covered with a white sheet. Together they take a dream drive all the way to the MILKYWAY.

The lyric poet Sappho, presented as a modern woman, turns up in her birthplace, Eressos on the island of Lesvos, and moves among its modern-day inhabitants.

The excavations at Dhaskalio (directed by Colin Renfrew and Michael Boyd of the McDonald Institute, University of Cambridge) have completely transformed our understanding of what was previously seen as a Cycladic enigma. The today uninhabited island of Keros, in Cyclades, Greece, was the site of the world’s earliest maritime sanctuary in the Early Bronze Age, and a thriving center for metal production, providing much evidence for all crucial developments in architecture.

Nafplio’s Syntagma Square is unique. A true pleasure of time "is our history. It is neither the square’s history nor Nafplio’s history, it’s the history of Greece". It has changed many forms and names and gives the stigma in today’s city. It is surrounded by buildings of various eras and cultures bearing memories of Ottoman, of Venetian, of neoclassical and of later eras, that to this day they retain the aesthetics of their original construction. Shall we go to the square?

A shepherd finds himself trapped in-between his everyday duties and his passion. During the shooting, he finds the strength to admit the truth – the Plain Truth.

Centenarian Cleoniki lives in the mountains of Evrytania, singing and narrating stories from the past. Kostas and Giorgos, two of her eight children, live with her. Everyone is awaiting the “Sotiros” (Savior’s) traditional feast, when the little village teems with life once again.

Captures of Kareem’s universe during the pandemic. A short film about the feeling of isolation, creating art in a world paused by Covid-19, and friendship.

A depressed man's monotonous life drastically changes when he bumps into a woman on the street.

Firewalkers records a traditional Greek rite which, now Christianized, goes back to the ancient Orphic Mysteries of Thrace: walking barefoot on burning charcoal without pain or burning.

Τhe film refers to the participation and contribution of the woman in the Resistance during the period of Occupation 1941-1944, as well as the consequences she suffered. It is based on the oral testimonies of the women who survived, based on the historical route.

Athens. The last day of a female member of an illegal terrorist organization. Despina shoots, kills, wanders around the city, tries to find help, fails in every attempt, gets shot, dies in her apartment. The movie attempts a personal portrait of the city of Athens through the drifting of the main character. The Lair - a low budget production with DIY aesthetics and queer elements - is an existential road movie.

The Tarahi series, IV, V and VI (2007) by Haris Epaminonda are developed from excerpts of Greek flm and television footage from the 60’s, attempting a mediation between diferent realities: the recent past, the everyday life and the upcoming future, translating them into a single plan.

A man is trapped in a loop.

Two kids research Nouvelle Vague for a school project.

The night life of Omonia. A combination of fiction and real life.

All the incredible people you might meet if you spend a night at the Vice Squad. All the situations a sergeant in this department has to deal with, both human and professional...

The right to breathe and to feel the fall. Earthquake. Inside or outside. A connection through matter and its dissolution. The earth, the stone, the sand, the sea. Bodies. Connected. Dry flowers pushing out from the sand. Dissolving. Filled bodies, unstoppable. Earth bodies, floating inside or outside. The right to exist, to simply be.

An urban legend has it that a nine-year-old ghost girl occupies foreclosed apartments in downtown Athens and violently attacks real estate agents and prospective buyers. A young couple in love, eager to start their life together, will try to take advantage of the little ghost for their own benefit. (filmfestival.gr)

A short film about a french tourist that discovers a side of the city of Athens that is not described in the tourist guides. Best short film for the 3rd Thessaloniki Film Festival. Directed by Kollatos Dimitris, 1962, 11'.

In 1962, a group of young women made headlines in Greece by running away to join a convent. Uninterested in praying all day, they started a shelter for abandoned and abused children. 50 years later, they are still raising infants without a wedding band, without help from church or state.

The story of the autonomous women's group of Thessaloniki, which ran from 1985-1995. Feminist magazine, SOS line for abused women, women's festivals, marches and events. What do women from the group say about then and now? How did it work in the public space? How did it change us?

A man wanders the limits of landscape before the sea. Bodies before him, bodies with the landscape.

Tamtakos runs a computer store. He has a sister who wants to get maried a fortune hunter.

A variation of the myth of Antigone. In a small island colony of Minoan Crete called Lycabettus, the ambassadors of the mother city propose a revolutionary irrigation system that could modernise the production system.

Melanie, a mentally ill woman decides to end her life in a hotel room when she hears a woman's cry for help from the room next door. Unable to discern between reality and fantasy she decides to investigate whilst an unexpected guest shows up.

Secret agent Kyriakos Delaportas wakes up from a coma after six years. His memory gradually returns, and with it come images, sounds, and memories. But in the world of secret services, what you see is not always what it seems. What is the connection between Delaportas' nightmares and... aliens? What happened to Artemis Kefala, and what is the relationship between John Valos and Police Officer Fleka?