The Capsule

In a palatial mansion perched on a cliff lashed by the sea, six women spend their days repeating absurd rituals orchestrated by an imposing matriarch. In this exquisite “Greek Gothic mystery” (commissioned by the DESTE Foundation for the Deste Fashion Collection 2012 – a project developed simultaneously as a stand-alone film and a window installation at Barneys New York), the cyclical nature of life and the myriad faces of femininity emerge almost animistically from the non-human – from the ruffles of an interactive dress that “springs to life” when touched by light, from an austere black uniform of a dress (directly referencing Michael Cacoyannis’s A Girl in Black), from collars made of fabric or some precious metal: that is, from all we choose to wear on our bodies, things that already belong to the past, giving shape to identities that have been handed down.

Screening Schedule

No physical screenings scheduled.

Direction: Athina Rachel Tsangari

Script: Athina Rachel Tsangari, Aleksandra Waliszewska

Cinematography: Thimios Bakatakis

Editing: Matt Johnson

Sound: Leandros Ntounis

Actors: Ariane Labed, Isolda Dychauk, Clémence Poésy, Evangelia Randou, Aurora Marion, Deniz Gamze Ergüven, Sofia Dona

Production: Haos Film, Deste Foundation for Contemporary Art

Producers: Maria Hatzakou, Kyriakos Karseras, Athina Rachel Tsangari

Costumes: Sandra Backlund, Bordelle, Ying Gao, Cat Potter, Isabelle Vigier, Marc Jacobs for Louis Vuitton, Athina Rachel Tsangari, Vassilia Rozana

Executive producer: Dakis Joannou

Format: DCP

Color: Color

Production Country: Greece

Production Year: 2012

Duration: 37'

Contact: Haos Film

Animation: Zina Papadopoulou & Petros Papadopoulos

Athina Rachel Tsangari

Athina Rachel Tsangari’s films have been hailed as “genre-bending screwball tragedies.” Her sophomore film Attenberg won the Coppa Volpi at the Venice Film Festival. Chevalier won Best Film at BFI-London and was nominated for Best Foreign Film at the Independent Spirit Awards. Both films were Greece’s official submissions at the Oscars. Lead director/EP on the BBC2/HBO Max series Trigonometry (Berlinale Series 2020). Under her banner Haos Film, she produced films for Yorgos Lanthimos and Georgis Grigorakis, and was co-producer and actor on Richard Linklater’s Before Midnight. She has taught cinema at Harvard, UT Austin and Le Fresnoy in France, and was the Artistic Director of the Oxbelly Screenwriting and Directing Labs.