Neritan Zinxhiria was selected for this year’s residency program “Berlin AiR: Thessaloniki-Berlin”

Award-winning filmmaker Neritan Zinxhiria has been selected by Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg for this year’s “Berlin AiR: Thessaloniki–Berlin” residency scholarship program, organized for the fifth consecutive year in collaboration with the Thessaloniki Film Festival. The program offers Greek film professionals developing a new project the opportunity to live and work in Berlin for a period of three months.

Zinxhiria will participate in the program with his project The Appalling Human Voice of the Animals, produced by Efijeni Kokedhima. The project also took part in the Crossroads Co-production Forum of the Agora at the 65th Thessaloniki International Film Festival, where it received the Greener Screen Award, which provides guidance on sustainable filmmaking practices before and during production. The film is set on the steppe, deep within a futuristic Byzantine landscape, where a mercenary is destined to be born twice and die once. The world will be saved either by him or by the dead woman he carries on his back. The project has also received support from the Hubert Bals Fund of the Rotterdam International Film Festival.

Neritan Zinxhiria was born in Tirana and grew up in Athens. He lives and works between Greece and Albania, creating fiction films, documentaries, and experimental cinema. His films, Chamomile, The Time of a Young Man About to Kill, A Country of Two, Light from Light, and Noi explore themes of memory, grief, and the ways in which history is inscribed upon bodies, landscapes, and communities. He began his career as a graphic designer creating film posters before directing his first short film at the age of eighteen. He was also one of the youngest projectionists at the historic Trianon Cinema in Athens.

His work has been presented at more than 200 international film festivals, museums, and art institutions, including the New Museum, the Benaki Museum, and the Centre Pompidou. His Italian-shot film The Time of a Young Man About to Kill had its world premiere at the Busan International Film Festival, produced by Valeria Golino and Gabriele Oricchio, and starring Bartosz Bielenia. A Country of Two was produced by Bianca Oana, an Academy Award nominee and Golden Bear-winning producer. Light from Light premiered in the Tiger Short Competition at the International Film Festival Rotterdam and went on to win the Grand Prix at the Slamdance Film Festival. Noi received the Golden Dionysus Award at the Drama International Short Film Festival and has been selected for the 2027 European Film Awards short film program.

In 2025, Zinxhiria participated as a director in Electra7, a project commissioned by the Athens Epidaurus Festival to celebrate its 70th anniversary, in collaboration with the Hellenic Film Academy. More recently, he received funding from the Council of Europe Pilot Programme for Series Co-Productions for his project The Boy Who Could Listen to the Soil. With this project, he took part in the Meet the Future program of the Thessaloniki International Film Festival’s Agora in 2023, an initiative showcasing emerging filmmaking talent.

Each year, the filmmaker selected for the “Berlin AiR: Thessaloniki–Berlin” residency scholarship has the opportunity to become acquainted with the full spectrum of German film production while experiencing firsthand the many facets of Berlin, a city at the heart of European artistic creation. As part of the program, established professionals from the German film industry serve as mentors, sharing their expertise and offering valuable guidance to participants. The scholarship, funded by Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg, fully covers accommodation and travel expenses (including round-trip airfare) and provides each participant with a monthly stipend of €1,200. Previous participants in the “Berlin AiR: Thessaloniki–Berlin” residency include Sonia Liza Kenterman, Efthymis Kosemund-Sanidis, Yorgos Zois, and Thanasis Trouboukis.

Making the journey in the opposite direction, from Berlin to Thessaloniki, as part of the complementary “Berlin AiR: Berlin–Thessaloniki” residency program organized by Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg, will be filmmaker Lillah Halla. Her feature debut, Levante, premiered at the Cannes Critics’ Week, where it won the FIPRESCI Prize for Best Film, while her short film Menarca was also screened in the same section. During her stay in Thessaloniki, Halla will work on her next project's script titled, Womb (Gebärmutter), which delves onto the organ as a landscape that maps history, abjection and power relations, while also imagining it as a space of reinvention and resistance. She will also be attending the 67th Thessaloniki International Film Festival and participate in the activities of the Festival’s Agora.