67th TIFF: the Greek films of this year's edition

We are delighted to unveil the 26 full-length films and the 27 short films screened at the 67th Thessaloniki International Film Festival, within the framework of the Greek Film Festival.

For yet another year, the Festival offers its longstanding support to Greek cinema and the Greek filmmakers through a series of targeted and innovative actions and initiatives.

A total of 19 Greek films will celebrate their premiere at the 67th TIFF, nine of which take part in the Festival’s competition section. The films A Whole Person Almost by Efthimis Kosemund-Sanidis, A Day in the Life of Jo: Chapter Phaedra by Jacqueline Lentzou and Titanic Ocean by Konstantina Kotzamani take part in the International Competition section. Two Greek films, Elena’s Shift by Stefanos Tsivopoulos and Recrucified by Theo Papadoulakis, as well as two Cypriot films, with Greek co-production, The Lion at My Back by Tonia Mishiali and Hold Onto Me by Myrsini Aristidou were selected for the Meet the Neighbors+ competition section. Moreover, two Greek films are included in the >>Film Forward competition section, Particles of Dust by Argyris Germanidis and Under the Judas Tree by Christos Houliaras.

The Greek Film Festival is held as designated by the law. The members of the advisory committee assigned with the preselection of the films of the Greek Film Festival were: Christina Ioakeimidi, director, Thanos Tokakis, actor and director and Danae Spathara, producer.

Independent awards

The Greek Film Festival is bestowing a series of independent prizes and awards, with the aim of reinforcing Greek cinema.

• Τhe FISCHER Audience Awards.
• The EKKOMED (Hellenic Film and Audiovisual Center) Award, accompanied by a 5,000-euro cash prize, granted to a debutant director, in a Greek production having its premiere in the official selection (“First Run”) and the Best Location Award, accompanied by a 1,500-euro cash prize, bestowed by the Hellenic Film Commission of EKKOMED to a location manager (or a director in case of no location manager in the film) of a film by a debutant director in a Greek production premiering at the official selection.
• Τwo first of the two awards bestowed by ERT S.A. (Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation) is granted to the film awarded by the International Federation of Film Critics (FIPRESCI), accompanied by a 3,000-euro cash prize. In addition, the Best Original Music Award, launched for the first time in 2023 and accompanied by a 2,000-euro cash prize, is granted to a Greek film screened at the Festival. The members of the Best Original Music Award jury are: Leonidas Antonopoulos (deputy director of the radio station KOSMOS 93.6), Margarita Mytilinaiou (Head of ERT’s music radio stations), Tassos Rossopoulos (composer, deputy director of the ERT Third Programme 90.9).
• The Finos Film Award, accompanied by a 3,000-euro cash prize, is bestowed to a film of the Greek selection. The Finos Film Award jury is composed of: Varvara Douka, director and head of the Pitching Lab at the Drama International Short Film Festival (DISFF), Charis Mazarakis, director and screenwriter, and Spyros Jacovides, director and screenwriter.
• The J.F. Costopoulos Foundation Award, accompanied with a cash prize of 3,000 euros, is bestowed to a film that presents a comprehensive aesthetic proposition, promotes the art of cinema and demonstrates its affinities with the other arts. The J.F. Costopoulos Foundation Award aims to support the Greek film industry production. This year’s independent evaluation jury is composed of: Betty-Despoina Kaklamanidou (Professor AUTh), Amerissa Basta (film director) and Harry Lagoussis (film director).
• Within the framework of the memorandum of cooperation with the Municipality of Thessaloniki, the Municipality of Thessaloniki's 'City Stories' award, accompanied by a €5,000 prize, is also presented. As cities are the locus where the lives and dreams of the people who inhabit them intersect, the thematic category of Greek films at the 67th Thessaloniki International Film Festival eligible for the Municipality of Thessaloniki award is titled 'City Stories', featuring films that explore themes or tell stories related to modern cities and daily life within them
• We continue our collaboration with the Thessaloniki State Symphony Orchestra, through the TSSO Award. The award will be bestowed to the composer of a film taking part in the Festival’s official selection and scored with original orchestral music, offering the winner the chance to team up with the TSSO for the recording of a future OST.
• The award of the International Federation of Film Critics - FIPRESCI.
• The award of the Greek Film Critics Association - PEKK, bestowed to a Greek film screened at the Greek Film Festival.
• The Youth Jury Awards (Best Feature Film Award and Special Youth Jury Award), bestowed by a student jury from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and the Macedonia University of Thessaloniki.
• Α Crew United Award is bestowed to a director of a Greek film taking part in one of the competition sections (International Competition/Meet the Neighbors+/>> Film Forward) of the 67th Thessaloniki International Film Festival. The winner of the Crew United Award will receive a 5-year free Premium membership subscription on Crew United, the leading online networking platform connecting audiovisual professionals in Europe, also operating in Greece.

The Thessaloniki International Film Festival, through its official selection and Agora’s initiatives, offers support to the Greek cinema community through a series of targeted actions, programmes, awards and prizes, administering a fee to all Greek films of the official selection.

The Festival is also providing an invaluable chance to Greek directors to showcase their work before professionals from the international field. Movies from this year’s Greek production will be screened at Cinando online platform – one of the most important tools for cinema professionals on a worldwide scale.

Classics Revisited

With the screening of the restored print of Maria Plyta's Eve (1953), the Festival inaugurates its new section, Classics Revisited. This initiative represents the natural evolution of the Festival's ongoing commitment to the preservation and promotion of our film heritage.

During her summer vacation, a married woman, Eve, meets a young man with whom she engages in a fleeting romantic affair, sparking her husband's rage and the critical gossip of the island's small community. This is the sole film produced by Kominis Film, while Mikis Theodorakis's name appears in cinema credits for the very first time. Maria Plyta's Eve (1953) is the first restored Greek film ever screened as part of the Cannes Classics program at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival. Restoration Credits: Restored by The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project and Cineteca di Bologna at L’Immagine Ritrovata in association with Alatas Films and Betty-Despoina Kaklamanidou and in cooperation with the Greek Film Archive. Funding provided by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation.

Special screenings

The Thessaloniki Film Festival is organizing special screenings of Greek films. Specifically, in collaboration with Finos Film, the film Happy Beginning (1954) by Dinos Dimopoulos will be screened at the 67th TIFF. Additionally, Alexis Alexiou's new film Sea of Glass (2026) will have its avant-première at the Festival, while Renos Haralambidis's film TheClassic Masterpiece (2026) will be presented at the open-air Apollon Cinema.

In Happy Beginning (1954) by Dinos Dimopoulos, Athens Radio announces a competition for commercial broadcasts. Two trios enter: three male composers and three female lyricists. Though they begin by undermining each other in pursuit of the prize, they eventually bond – professionally and emotionally.

In Sea of Glass (2026) by Alexis Alexiou that has its avant premiere in the Thessaloniki International Film Festival, 65-year-old Vangelio decides to go on holiday after her husband’s death. In a run-down off-season seaside resort she meets Vicky, a young woman caring for her alcoholic father. When Vangelio protects Vicky from her father’s violence, chaos erupts in their seaside town.

After its screenings during the summer at open-air theaters in Greece, the premiere of the film The Classic Masterpiece (2026) by Renos Haralambidis will take place at the open-air theater Apollon in Thessaloniki. At the twilight of his career, a film critic unexpectedly gets the chance to direct the only screenplay he ever wrote – conceived in his youth, when he still believed he would become a great filmmaker, before reality forced him to abandon that dream. There is only one condition from the producers: the film must be a classic masterpiece. He accepts. An existential comedy about cinema, vanity, time, and the impossibility of escaping the person we once believed we would become.

Discover the recent Greek production:

First Run

Films celebrating their premiere at the Festival, featuring the cream of the crop of this year's Greek production. We present the Greek films of the 67th TIFF.

International Competition

A Day in the Life of Jo: Chapter Phaedra

Jacqueline Lentzou

Jo, wild, melancholic, and only 15, is too shy to listen to the music she truly loves. When her classmate Phaedra performs an ethereal song that makes Jo's heart skip a beat, everything suddenly shifts. Between one breath and the next, Jo writes a poem and cuts a rose as an apology for her moody mother. The details of last night’s dream slip from her mind. A day of changes.

A Whole Person Almost

Efthimis Kosemund-Sanidis

Ilias, a young man in debt, arrives on a remote island to claim the inheritance of his estranged father, a doctor. There he has to confront a small community centered around his late father, and meets and develops a connection with Kalliopi, a local woman with dreams of fleeing the island. Whilst inexplicable illnesses begin to spread at an alarming rate, love grows.

Titanic Ocean

Konstantina Kotzamani

In the scintillating, pop-infused world of a Japanese boarding school that trains teenage girls to become professional mermaids, 17-year-old Akame learns to hold her breath, perform for adoring crowds, and swim alongside sharks. Under her silicone mermaid tail, Akame will find her siren voice, discover first love and experience a metamorphosis, turning performance into transformation.

Meet the Neighbors+

Elena’s Shift

Stefanos Tsivopoulos

Elena, a Romanian immigrant and mother of a nine-year-old boy, is deemed “not Greek enough” to be granted Greek citizenship, and when, days later, she is unfairly dismissed from her job as a cleaner, the life she is building in Athens begins to fall apart. Seeking a solution, she meets Yota, the lawyer for the cleaners’ union. As the two women try to expose the illegal practice behind the so-called “white contract” that led to Elena’s dismissal, they grow closer and fall in love. But when their revelations bring threats and Yota asks her to back down, Elena is faced with a choice between compromising for the love and life she is fighting for, or breaking with everyone and everything. A story about the price of choosing where and how you belong.

Recrucified

Theo Papadoulakis

In the near future, on a Greek island under foreign occupation, Manolis, a rebellious young street artist with a speech disorder, desecrates the statue of Christ with his friends. Faced with brutal punishment, he betrays them and is forced to join the Security Corps and portray Christ in the annual Passion Play. When he becomes witness to the cruel treatment of persecuted refugees, he is torn between guilt and awakening. Will he find his voice and resist injustice?

The Lion at My Back

Tonia Mishiali

Mariama, a teenage Senegalese asylum seeker, and Stella, a Cypriot recovering drug addict, are striving to rebuild their lives. When their paths first cross, they use each other, but their shared struggle for survival in a world that failed them both sparks an unexpected bond. Together, they redefine the true meaning of love and family, in a heartwarming tale of sacrifice, female solidarity and empowerment.

Hold Onto Me

Myrsini Aristidou

When 11-year-old Iris gets into trouble with the police, she comes face-to-face with her estranged father, Aris, who has returned for his father’s funeral. Determined to know him, she pushes into his isolated world, where a fragile relationship begins to form.

>>Film Forward

Particles of Dust

Argyris Germanidis

The corpse of a young man washes up on the shores of Atalante, marking Isidore’s return to the land of the living. As he follows the traces of his past lives in search of lost memories, Isidore finds himself caught in a deceptive web of stories within stories – a world of Time Travelers and Doppelgängers, Picture Eaters and Textile Merchants, Phantom Friends and Phantom Lovers.

Under the Judas Tree

Christos Houliaras

In a remote village in northern Greece near the Albanian border, Elias, a self-exiled father, reconnects with his best friend, local police officer Kostas, and Kostas’s wife, Vito. When a young woman is found murdered outside the village, solving the crime becomes an obsession for him, a purpose that fills his emotional void and his empty days.

The following films will also have their premiere in the Festival, as part of the First Run section:

Apart

Stelana Kliris

1974. When Turkey invades Cyprus, young Eleni escapes through an arranged marriage to a fellow Greek-Cypriot in apartheid South Africa. She leaves one divided country for another. Though strangers at first, Eleni and Nico slowly fall for each other and start to build a life together. But when an unexpected friendship with a local Black woman reveals a secret from Eleni’s past, she must make a decision that could change her life forever.

The Megalomaniacs

Spiros Stathoulopoulos

A Marine archaeologist embarks on a radical mission: to prove that ancient pottery once captured sound, etched like a primitive vinyl record. Before she can test ancient amphoras, she must sculpt replicas to experiment with. Reluctantly, she enlists the help of her cynical ex-brother-in- law, a failed sculptor drowning in wine and resentment toward sound itself - especially the racket of her foul-mouthed cockatoo. Amid clashing egos and surreal twists, the journey leads to a discovery that transcends centuries.

Angel Downtown

Freddy Vianellis

The path to performance runs through life. Aggelos shares stories, encounters, and small adventures on his way to the theater. As he wanders through downtown Athens, everyday life becomes a stage, and the people he meets illuminate the delicate relationship between art, care, and life itself.

Worthy

Christos Georgiou

The discovery of an icon, which Ilias believes to be crying, sets him on his journey from cemetery caretaker to the chosen one. While he is on his quest to bring the icon to the people of the small town, we also follow three other stories of people who could do with a little help from a miraculous icon.

The Gleaner

Panagiotis Rappas

On Christmas Eve, on a small snow-covered Aegean island in the late 19th century, Ahtitsa, a poor elderly woman, struggles to raise her two orphaned grandchildren, with the help of her kind neighbor Gerbinho. Just as despair is about to consume her, a check from her long-lost son in America brings hope. When the village grocer attempts to exploit her ignorance of its true value, a chance intervention by a stranded merchant from Syros gifts Ahtitsa a brighter future.

Game Theory

Karolos Zonaras

Tom, the 40-year-old only son of businessman Michel Kormanos, has spent his life longing for the love and recognition of a father who never believed in him. In an existential crisis, he turns to an AI whose guidance shapes his choices. Secretly involved with Vera, his father’s wife, he becomes obsessed with keeping her to himself and increasingly jealous as her brilliant brother Johnny takes the place Michel has always denied Tom. When mobster Stamoulis demands that Michel pay for their dark shared past and orders Johnny’s death, Tom is drawn into a game whose rules change with every move.

Foreign Blood

Tonis Lykouressis

Dennis, a man in his late fifties, leads a quiet life in Zakynthos, running a bar with Vera, his Bulgarian partner, and her 20-year-old son, Alex, whom he regards as his own. One winter night, Alex takes a mysterious foreign girl on a ride and causes an accident. Dennis rushes her to hospital, only to discover she is his estranged daughter. As her condition worsens and Alex disappears, Dennis must confront his past and choose between protecting him and seeking justice.

Don't Forget the Sunshine

Marco Papadopoulos

After six years in Germany, Maria gradually loses touch with who she is, trapped between the routine of her work and the intensity of her nights in the techno scene. When her ailing mother and older brother come to visit from Greece for the first time, old wounds reopen and long-suppressed conflicts rise to the surface. Caught between her life in the Ruhr region and her ties to Thessaloniki, Maria is forced to confront her family’s past and search for her own identity.

Alexander the Great and the Accursed Dragon

Dimos Avdeliodis

In Karagiozis’s dream, a man‑eating Dragon seizes control of the city’s aqueduct. In order to prevent panic, Rigas persuades him to accept his victims by lottery. When the lot falls on Rigopoula, twelve‑year‑old Alexandre, searching for the horse he adores, unexpectedly comes upon the Dragon. He does not panic. Selfless love completely conquers fear.

The Flaw

Theophilos Papastylianos

In a bleak future where the Regime decides who belongs and who doesn't, the Line divides everyone. Now, a ruthless Interrogator is ordered to prove a Suspect’s guilt. A game of psychological manipulation unfolds as the Plan advances with cold precision. Every word or action is cast in a new light. Reality itself becomes twisted. But just as the puzzle seems complete, a single flaw changes everything. When a gun is drawn, the question is no longer who will pull the trigger – but whether either man can cross the Line that has always divided them. Based on the global bestseller by Antonis Samarakis.

A Second Viewing

Uchronia

Fil Ieropoulos

Uchronia is a psychedelic docu-essay inspired by Arthur Rimbaud’s visionary poem “Une Saison En Enfer.” Rimbaud’s ghost travels through history to encounter revolutionaries and queer freaks.

Maralinga Maningrida Mantamaru

Alexandros Voulgaris (The Boy)

A neverending noon. A loop of secrets. Miranda, Marion, Sarah, Irma, and Joan. Stuck in time and time travelers. They may be the only living people left on Earth. Testimonies, songs, and traumas from Australia.

Last Call

Sherif Francis

New Year’s Eve, 2000. A desperate fugitive, armed with a live grenade, breaks into an apartment in downtown Athens and demands to go live on air. A young journalist along with ambitious media execs and a divided police force are thrown into a deadly game of negotiation, manipulation, and survival, while the nation watches in real time. Inspired by true events.

Additionally, 23 Greek films will be screened with captions based on dialogue, allowing deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers to enjoy them. The films will also be available with Greek subtitles on the Festival's online platform. Following the conclusion of the 67th edition, the Thessaloniki Film Festival and Alpha Bank will provide all adapted subtitles and audio descriptions to the films' producers, ensuring they remain accessible for any future screenings, whether in cinemas or on other media—hoping that with the Festival's support, these films will be distributed in their accessible format both in theaters and for home viewing, so everyone can enjoy them.

Tribute to Nikos Grammatikos

The Thessaloniki Film Festival presents an Honorary Golden Alexander for his lifetime contribution to cinema to the eminent filmmaker Nikos Grammatikos, one of the most beloved Greek directors and screenwriters. The 67th edition (November 5 to 15) will host a major tribute to Nikos Grammatikos's work, featuring screenings of all his feature-length and short films. Additionally, audiences will have the opportunity to attend an open discussion where he will share his creative process.

Meanwhile, the film Exodos (1995) will be screened on the big screen for the very first time, courtesy of the ERT Archive. Immediately upon his release from prison, a man convicted of robbery meets his former lover. During his time behind bars, he writes a book revealing the truth about his murder.

The Thessaloniki Film Festival aims to share the power of cinema with every single audience member. For this reason, it screens films with Audio Description (AD) for blind and visually impaired individuals, as well as Subtitles for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing (SDH), both in cinema halls and online screenings. With Alpha Bank as accessibility sponsor, two films by Nikos Grammatikos will be made universally accessible: Truants, which marks its 30th anniversary this year, and Night Flowers. The schedule for all universally accessible screenings will also be available in Braille.

Greek Short Films

Finally, as each year, the Festival will present the awarded Greek films from all national and international sections of Drama International Short Film Festival. The awarded short films will also be screened at a special section in the Film Market, accessible by sales agents and representatives of international short film festivals.

The 27 movies that will be screened are:

(HOME) by Nellie Evaggelidou

Find Fenia by Lila Barba

Free Eliza (Notes on an Anatomical Imperfection) by Alexandra Matheou

Holterline by Alexandra Ntelitheou

Meltdown by Evgenia Papazisi

Multi Family Garage Sale by Jacques Simha

Shift by Ioanna Skylogianni

The Great Organ by Roxanne Krimizi, Michalis Kimonas

Wheel to Live by Vicky Anastasiadou

Strays by Anastasia Gkivalou

Amaranth by Anthie Daoutaki

From 1 to Blue by Sofia Priovolou

Arkansas by Yannis Karpouzis

Game Farm by Vasilis Georgoulas

Desert, She by Ioanna Digenaki

Loutropolis by Anna Papadopoulou

Good Friday by Loukia Tzortzopoulou

Remember Julia by Diamantis Anastasiadis

A Moment in Her Life by Νicolas Costes

My Cousin’s Wedding by Silva Tsoumana

The Dog by Konstantinos Demis

Horizon by Afroditi Tavri

Before the Meal Got Cold by Alkistis Kafetzi

Solountrania by Akis Stavropoulos

The Monsters of the City by Yorgos Vlassis

The Rooster’s Gospel by Thanos Tokakis

Hot Wax by Krysianna Papadakis