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A dear friend of Thessaloniki International Film Festival and the Greek audience, the American filmmaker, producer and screenwriter Alexander Payne returned to Thessaloniki to present his new film Downsizing that had its Greek premiere at the 58th TIFF. On this occasion, Payne gave a press conference on Thursday November 9, 2017 at Warehouse C, together with his close collaborator, acclaimed cinematographer Phedon Papamichael.
TIFF’s Agora Works in Progress opened on Thursday, November 9, 2017, at the Olympion theatre, as part of the 58th Thessaloniki International Film Festival, in the presence of TIFF’s General Director, Elise Jalladeau.
Yianna Sarri, head of the Agora, welcomed the participants and thanked the sponsors and the collaborators of the section, announcing: “This year, we have twelve projects, eleven of which are competing and one is not. We wish you enjoy the screenings!”.
In its previous editions, Works in Progress hosted cinema projects by directors such as: Argyris Papadimitropoulos, Angelos Frantzis, Margarita Manda, Yannis Economides, Asaf Korman and Mira Fornay, amongst others.
This year's Works in Progress jury is comprised by Dorien van de Pas (Representative of Netherlands Filmfund-Eurimages, The Netherlands), Bero Beyer (Artistic Director of International Film Festival Rotterdam, Netherlands) and Ilias Georgiopoulos (Distributor, Danaos Films, Greece).
The Agora Works in Progress section hosts exclusive screenings for the Agora's accredited guests: producers, sales agents, distributors and festival representatives who attend the 58th TIFF. This way, said professionals are given the opportunity to be the first ones to discover feature films from the Mediterranean, Central Europe and Balkan regions at a near-completion stage.
This year’s Works in Progress films are:
The Works in Progress section hosts the Eurimages Lab Project Award that amounts up to 50,000 euros for unconventional projects, while, for the seventh consecutive year, the Agora collaborates with Graal, which provides a post-production award in kind services to one film participating in the Agora Works in Progress section.
On the occasion of the screening of the three films competing this year for the LUX Prize, awarded each year by the European Parliament, a press conference took place on Wednesday 8 November 2017, at Warehouse C, as part of the 58th Thessaloniki International Film Festival.
The three competing films for the LUX Prize, which will be hosted in this year’s event, are the following: BPM (Beats per Minute) by Robin Campillo (France), which is already released in Greek cinemas, Amanda Kernell’s Sami Blood (Sweden-Denmark-Norway), which won last year’s 57th TIFF “Human Values Award” of the Hellenic Parliament, and Western by Valeska Grisebach (Germany-Bulgaria-United Kingdom) which premieres in this year’s festival edition. The LUX award ceremony will take place on Wednesday 15 November 2017 during the EP plenary session in Strasbourg.
TIFF’s head of programming and member of the panel selecting the films for the LUX Prize Yorgos Krassakopoulos was the press conference moderator, and welcomed Leonidas Antonakopoulos, Head of the European Parliament Office in Greece, to the panel of the event.
Yorgos Krassakopoulos stressed that it’s the sixth year in a row that the TIFF hosts the three shortlisted films of the LUX Prize, an initiative that began 11 years ago. Consequently, Mr Antonakopoulos talked about the European Parliament’s contribution to this attempt to spread and disseminate the good quality European cinema. He added that the European Parliament covers the cost of subtitling the three finalist films in all 24 EU official languages and gives thus the opportunity to every EU citizen to watch them in their language. “This initiative surpasses the narrow artistic limits and reflects the multiculturalism which consists the real foundation of Europe and the EU. All competing films, and not solely the three shortlisted ones, manifest the European values, as they are reflected in the concepts of solidarity, tolerance, freedom of speech, and human rights protection. The European Parliament aspires to act as these values’ guardian”, Mr Antonakopoulos added.
Immediately afterwards, Mr Krassakopoulos described the finalist films selection procedure, during which a 21-member panel composed of people working in various cinematic professions -producers, programmers, critics, film directors- select films out of a long list, end up initially in 10, and then in three, which compete for the LUX Prize. Nevertheless, the final selection will not be made by the initial panel, but by the MEPs, who watch the three films and vote. “We are trying to find a happy medium between content and artistic value, so that each selected film addresses a topic that concerns today’s Europe, and at the same time is up to high artistic standards”, he added.
On his turn, Leonidas Antonakopoulos noted: “The European Parliament’s relation with cinema is now a procedure fully integrated to the organizational structure of the EU. The appeal of LUX Prizes within the Parliament gets bigger every year, as is the the MEPs’ participation. I must also say that the Education and Culture Committee’s work is in the right direction, as is the European Commission’s Creative Europe program. Our immediate plans include collaboration with even more institutions, in order to create more platforms for interaction and dissemination of good quality cinema in all 28 EU member states”, he concluded.
Young professionals of the film industry who take part in the Thessaloniki Locarno Industry Academy International event in the 58th Thessaloniki International Film Festival’s Agora section had the opportunity to attend a particularly interesting discussion with Swedish film director Ruben Östlund on Wednesday 8 November 2017. The director, who won the Palme d’Or at Cannes Festival 2017 for his new film The Square, is in Thessaloniki on the occasion of the retrospective hosted by this year’s festival edition on his work.
After last year’s successful pilot edition, the Thessaloniki Locarno Industry Academy International in Southeast Europe and the Mediterranean –a TIFF collaboration with the Festival del Film Locarno - comes back to the Agora section of the 58th TIFF (6-11 November 2017). Thessaloniki Locarno Industry Academy International is a training program created to help young professionals of the film industry to extend their experience and networking in the fields of international sales, marketing, distribution, presentation and programming. In the past, Locarno Industry Academy International was successfully launched in Mexico, Brazil and New York.
In the course of the discussion, moderated by Vanja Kaludjercic, Regional Project Manager of Locarno Industry Academy International, Ruben Östlund noted repeatedly that it is very important for a film director to receive feedback and listen to the wider reactions on his idea or conception. “Eventually, though, one must take responsibility for the project. One has to decide which ideas will be included in the film and which won’t”, he stressed.
One of the most important parts of the discussion was about concessions, by the director or otherwise, during the creation of a film. “I don’t think I ever compromised, or were pressed by any distribution company”, said Ruben Östlund, noting that each link in the big chain of the film industry plays its own important role. He specifically mentioned the big difference between Europe and the USA, as to the film’s production and post-production process. On state funding, he noted that in Europe no one asks you to make a film, to have an initial idea. It is the director who has to find ways to contact the companies or secure state funding for the film they want to make.
Speaking about one of his previous films, Play (2011) and its subject which has been considered ambiguous, Östlund claimed that the real story which the film was based on (and is about gangs of minors in Gothenburg who rob mostly other minors in city malls) is a source of debate by itself, with no particular intervention on behalf of the director. “In any case, when you have a general idea on a film, the first thing you have to do is convince someone else immediately why this idea is interesting. This is the main rule. And this is perhaps a major problem with European film industry. Here, most people ask for money instead of trying to promote their ideas on the films they want to make. In the US, everything is about survival. You’re out there on the street. It is very interesting to compare the two systems, both of which have pros and cons”, noted the director. Regarding to this, he focused on the different artistic approach of films in the two continents, describing America as more conventional and traditional both in form and in context, while in Europe, as he said, even production companies function differently. “Distributors in Europe are in general safe. They have already been funded by the state for distributing a film and seem not so interested as in the States. This is not always the rule, though”, he explained.
On his films advertisement and promotion, the director noted that he travels a lot and gives many interviews. “This is a very traditional image of a filmmaker who has to fight for his work. It is not bad, just too time-consuming”, he noted. He did not omit to mention the way he constantly tries to “fool” the media, speaking about the video he shot and made public a few years back, which showed him being mad when hearing that his film Force Majeure did not make it to the list of candidates for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 2014. “You have to be in a position to play with the system’s conventions, be imaginative so as to exploit the system to your advantage”, he stressed.
As to the recognition of the director’s work, his producer and regular collaborator, Erik Hemmendorff, who also attended the discussion, noted that in spite of general belief, Ruben Östlund’s films were warmly welcomed at home. Nevertheless, the risk of failure does not cease to exist. “We have our own production company and fund ourselves. Thus, we always take the biggest risk. We cannot expect someone else to act on our behalf. We have to constantly find solutions to our problems”, the producer stressed.
On his part, Ruben Östlund insisted much on the need for cinematographers to network widely among them and other film industry professionals, so that not only they get inspiration from new ideas, but have the opportunity to communicate their proposals and opinions as well. “It is very important to be able to maintain good relations”, he noted. “When you graduate from the film school, you think a good script is everything. That a solid script will definitely become a film. Unfortunately, it does not work this way. The quality of a product is obviously based on the energy you put to it. Yet the financial part is based on a social framework you cannot avoid”, he added.
On his relation with the audience, the Swedish director claimed that in general, the reactions to his films are more or less the same everywhere, apart from some minor cultural differences. “Viewers don’t easily surprise me”, he added, with the exception of Poland, where his films were unexpectedly successful with no particular promotion. He also spoke about other important issues about his life, the way he was inspired for his last film The Square, as well as his future plans, topics which he approached, and the particularly interesting discussion which took place on Tuesday 7 November 2017 as part of this year’s festival edition.
The young and promising sales representatives, distributors and new media specialists who participate in this year’s Thessaloniki Locarno Industry Academy International are Maximilien Dejoie (Just a Moment, Lithuania), Anjali Mandalia (Thunderbird Releasing, United Kingdom), Ivan Mihalic (Everything Works, Croatia), István Mráz (Mozinet, Hungary), Joanna De Sousa (Outsider Films, Portugal), Isabella Weber (Europa Distribution, Italy) and Christina Liapi (Heretic Outreach, Greece).
The Thessaloniki Locarno Industry Academy International is spondored by the production company Faliro House.
Son of Sofia by Elina Psykou
"You were once a child who did not want to grow up and you had fears and expectations, feeling frustrations and jealousy, telling lies, small and innocent lies".
Thorn by Gabriel Tzafka
“My aim is to emphasize small moments through a minimalist aesthetic, few shots and natural light. That's why we chose the forest as the background of our story”.
Rosemarie by Adonis Florides
“The film is a tragicomic portrait of a man who strives to balance between art and reality. The parallel world of the film exists within the one we live in”.
Arabia by Joao Dumans
“I really don't believe that cinema can do too much in a practical sense, but we can at least expose those lies and register our history in a different manner”.
No Name No Signature by Vahid Jalilvand
“How many times our inability and fear in expressing a simple fact has initiated a catastrophe in others’ lives?”
Zer by Kazim Oz
“Cinema leaves such a huge impact on people that it is bigger that this truths”.
