With a record high of 66,000 spectators and visitors the 26th Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival called it a wrap!
With a total of 66,000 spectators and visitors and a record high increase of 16% with regard to last year’s 25th TiDF, the 26th Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival, held from 7 to 17 March, called it a wrap, amidst an explosive ambiance with episodes of violence and intolerance.
This year’s TiDF hosted a great number of premieres, exciting talks and special events, and welcomed the internationally acclaimed artist Dimitris Papaioannou. Moreover, it bestowed honorary Golden Alexanders to the Academy Award-winning Spanish filmmaker Fernando Trueba and the Greek film director, screenwriter, author and translator Panayotis Evangelidis.
This year more than 300 screenings were held in physical spades, featuring a total of 250 full-length and short documentaries. In addition, 133 docs were screened at Festival’s online platform. The online screenings of the Platform+ section carried on until March 22nd, offering the chance to a larger audience to discover the best docs of the recent Greek production.
Overall, it has been an outstanding year for Greek cinema, with sold out screenings, vivid audience participation in the talks with Greek film directors and an increased interest on behalf of international press correspondents and film industry professionals for this year’s Greek production, which earned a total of 17 awards and special mentions.
Within the framework of Agora’s developmental actions a total of 659 meetings between 426 professionals of the film industry from Greece and abroad were held. We hope that these networking meetings will soon give birth to new projects, scripts and films. Moreover, Agora hosted three Agora Talks, one workshop and an open discussion as part of the Citizen Queer tribute, addressed to professionals of the audiovisual field.
The lineup of events during the eleven Festival days includes discussions, a universally accessible screening, an open to the public podcast special hearing, the live broadcast of the OSCARS® ceremony, book presentations and immersive screenings. In addition, Dimitris Papaioannou’s video installation Inside, as well as its backstage filming Backside, showcased at MOMus-Experimental Center for the Arts, were visited by more than 2,500 people,
The 26th Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival was held with the support of the Ministry of Culture, the Partnership Agreement of the Central Macedonia Regional Operational Program, the National Recovery and Resilience Plan “Greece 2.0”, the MEDIA programme, the Ministry of Tourism and ERT. COSMOTE TV was the Grand Sponsor of the Festival, for the 7th consecutive year, proving once again its support towards quality cinema. The Festival was happy to welcome PPC Group as its new Strategic Partner, and expresses its gratitude for the trust in its vision and work. Valuable was also the support of Alpha Bank, the Festival’s accessibility sponsor, Aegean, the Festival’s official air-carrier, Fischer, the Audience Awards sponsor, and Jameson. We would like to thank for their contribution the Greek Film Centre, the National Centre of Audiovisual Media and Communication S.A. (ΕΚΟΜΕ), Masoutis S.A., Savvikos, Stone Group, inclusion supporter, Ktima Kir-Yianni, ON Residence, Fraport, Interbus, Volvo Papadopoulos S.A. We want to thank the City of Thessaloniki, the Municipality Neapoli–Sykies, the Municipality of Pavlos Melas, the Metropolitan Organisation of Museums of Visual Arts of Thessaloniki – MOMus, 235, Mediterranean Palace, the Ports Public Authority and the Port of Thessaloniki.
We are eagerly waiting to meet again at the 3rd Evia Film Project, which will be held July 2-6, 2024.
