Festival films

On a sweltering August day in 1945, while villagers prepare for the wedding of the town clerk’s son, two Orthodox Jews arrive at the train station with mysterious boxes. The villagers fear the men may be survivors from the concentration camps who will demand their unjustly acquired property back... Touching upon a sensitive and not sufficiently discussed moment of European history, the director ventures to open Pandora’s box and capture in this black-and-white portrait of a waste land all the gray areas trespassed by humans in times of peace.

Α young pianist prepares for an audition abroad. Her brother distracts her with his unwanted inclination for the absurd. Their astrophysicist father seems incapable of dealing with his children's anxieties. A portrait of a family during their last summer together.

Α girl leads an unfulfilling life. She encounters a man and momentarily she believes this might bring up some change. The boy is following her around. The man falls ill. The boy forces himself into her world. People around her seem aloof and unfriendly.

On Lesvos island, an old abandoned dump lies on a mountain with two big craters. The craters are overflown by thousands of life jackets from the refugee waves. A worker is the only inhabitant of this uncanny place that resembles an alien planet or a new continent.

Stola has been spending his summer in the sweltering haze of festival parties. But one day, he runs into Roko, an old acquaintance, who is on a mission to discover medieval frescoes at a nearby monastery. Roko convinces Stola and a random group of partygoers to join him in his search. However, when their bus breaks down in the middle of nowhere, their brief excursion turns into an allegorical journey into the unknown.

On a farm amidst the tobacco fields of North Carolina lie buried the ashes of the father of Tracy and Jesse, in the land that he loved as nothing in the world. One week after his death, the two siblings find three older men camping in their field, who claim that they lived there 50 years ago and want to reclaim their land. The screenwriter of Junebug (a benchmark in American independent cinema) directs a film about family, ownership, grief, and letting go, eliciting a strong performance by Amy Ryan – each wrinkle on her face is an inscription of the trajectory from optimism to despair.

Α 14-year-old who grows up in a small Romani community in Calabria, is desperate to grow up fast: he drinks, hangs out with locals and African immigrants, and follows around his older brother who is his role model. Yet, one day he will be forced to prove if he is truly ready to become a man. Italy’s nomination for this year’s Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film infects the tradition of Italian neorealism with a totally personal style – it is no coincidence that Martin Scorsese is the executive producer in this film that indirectly points to his early filmography.

The film explores the significance of Greece’s national symbol, the Acropolis, in the creation of national identity and collective memory. Likening the “sacred rock” to the female body, the film attempts to make a comment on the timeless exploitation of the monument, while exploring the relation of History to pornography.

When the famous detective Nick Carter visits Prague, he becomes involved in a strange case of a missing dog and an even stranger carnivorous plant. He becomes convinced that he is standing against his greatest enemy – the Gardener, who supposedly died years ago in a swamp... A monumental film produced in the aftermath of the Czech New Wave that remains fascinating even four decades after its first screening.

Ivica is a 11-year-old kid who spends his days among friends, roaming around unexplored grounds of an industrial Serbian town. Bitter and disquieted, he’s about to find out that his parents are separating. His fragile figure embodies the heavy legacy of his bloodline and the shattering of the dreams of his youth. Will he manage to keep up with his exploration game?

Kidz and Pontix are two astro-fighters of the Battalion of Infinite Good and come from a distant planet. When their spacecraft breaks down, they make a forced landing in the bedroom of a little girl, Alexandra. In order to survive, they lodge inside her favorite dolls and ask for her help, so that they can repair their spacecraft. Alexandra willingly agrees to help them and all together they set off in search of spare parts; a search that will take them on a great adventure which will test not only their friendship but the limits of Infinity Good, to which the two small astro-fighters have sworn an oath.

In Always a Body, Always a Thing Papamargariti examines transformation and morphological/ontological fluidity through a series of bizarre incidents – actual or imagined – whose common thread is the ingestion and embodiment of plastic by living beings (fish, frogs) that end up mutating, as well as the appearance of a host of amorphous masses in natural settings (meadows, lakes).

Shot in Germany, Israel, Greece and Denmark, this film is the convergence of the voices, the stories, and the living landscapes of seven+ characters that live “against the warming comfort of the self-righteousness of their herd. People undefined by their class, undefined by their education, revolting against any sense of state or non-state, polyglots and polyfucked, traitors, un-marginalized and always out of the margin”. Or, as Homer would put it, “the Lawless, those without Hearth or Clan” (Iliad, I.63).

Toma meets Ana while they are both studying literature at university. Ana has a mild neurotic disorder and suffers from panic attacks. Toma follows her to every dark corner she ends up in, he fights his parents when they reject her, he accepts being a father and marries her, he becomes her babysitter, her driver, her everything. Toma appears to be in control of the couple’s relationship, when in fact he just gravitates around a woman he cannot understand. When Ana overcomes her fears and adapts to the outside world, Toma remains alone, trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together...

This work was inspired by half-completed constructions, in particular the – sometimes rusty – iron bars protruding from rooftops awaiting future development. In Greek, those bars are known as “anamones”, which can be loosely translated as “waitings.” Most of these bars will never serve the purpose they were intended. As we notice their existence in the urban landscape, the technical term “anamones” triggers an investigation into the deeper meanings surrounding the issue of family ties and relationships in a small, peculiar society like Cyprus.

Five stuck elevators. Strangers trapped inside them. They seem ordinary people; but they all have their inner fears, hidden agendas, and repressed emotions. Tension rises. There’s no communication – just bitter, angry men and women bringing the worst out of each other. Hell in four square meters. War begins.

A teenager that lives in a village in the large industrial zone in the Brazilian hinterland discovers the secret diary of a man who just died in a work accident in the local aluminum factory. Each of its pages brings to life a magic world of the longstanding wandering of the deceased in different landscapes and his interaction with people of all sorts; at the same time, the mythology of a unique personality who insisted on living his life with excitement and poetic impulse, no matter the hardship of the times, unravels.

Adah and Aaron meet in their psychoanalyst’s waiting room, they come closer as they are struggling to stay “clean” from their addictions, but they relapse on poppers, and become assholes – both literally and metaphorically! This anarchical, sensational and sensual film that runs the gamut of genres (from mumblecore to body horror) is rightfully eligible for the honorary (?) title of the most disgusting film ever shot – and not only because the main cast features members from the director’s own family...

A 30-year old man spends Midsummer’s Eve (which is celebrated across Sweden, as it signals the start of the summer break) together with friends on the west coast of Sweden. He makes his friends come and watch as he is going to jump in to the sea from a very high bridge

The most original, unreal, and entertaining chapter of the saga of the super spy across the continents is also the one that featured the most elegant James Bond in history (with Roger Moore in a once-in-a-lifetime role), established Grace Jones as a pop idol, and portrayed the most complex “bad guy,” thanks to Christopher Walken’s formidable interpretative skills.

A 30-year-old woman with a traumatic past meets a teenage girl who has troubles with her mother, and tries to seduce her. She feels an unprecedented attraction and identification, which will soon evolve into a manipulation and exploitation game. In this intense psychological thriller, one of the most overlooked Hollywood actresses unfolds her talent by building a multi-leveled character that lives “next door,” in all our dreams and nightmares.