Only a week left before the start of Thessaloniki Documentary Film Festival (2-12/3), the organizers of the event held the usual press conference, which is regularly broadcast simultaneously from Athens and Thessaloniki, to present a detailed program and attract our attention. to what they have separately prepared for this year. Artistic director Orestis Andreadakis noted that this year too, the festival will cover a wide range of topics, from human rights and the environment to historical memory and immigration, highlighting, however, two main ongoing conflicts: the ongoing war in Ukraine and what has arisen from struggle of women and men of Iran for freedom and justice.

All of the above and more have been translated into 237 full-length and short documentaries (99 world and European premieres), which will be shown in the coming days in Thessaloniki cinemas, as well as on the FNT online platform. Of these, 34 are divided into three competition sections: the Golden Alexander International Competition, Newcomers, which introduces us to the new voices of documentary filmmaking, and Film Forward, for more daring ones that subvert the traditional forms of the genre. As Mr. Andreadakis also reminded us, in recent years, the Festival has also issued a “ticket” to the Oscars, as its first winner is automatically included in the corresponding list of the Academy.

The curtain will open on March 2 with the world premiere of Paloma Tapata’s opera Singla, which tells the incredible story of Antonia Singla, the legendary deaf dancer who learned to dance flamenco without listening to music and changed the genre before suddenly disappearing from the stage. center of attention. As for the finale, there will be shown “Me and my pet” by the Dutchman Johan Kramer, about the relationship between people and animals. In the meantime, of course, we will see a lot of interesting things. Originally an anthology of new documentaries from documentary filmmakers including veteran James Ivory (Temperate), two-time Academy Award winner Barbara Koppel (New Orleans Alliance), legend Werner Herzog (Theater of Thought ”), Ukrainian Sergey Loznitsa (“Natural History of Destruction”), etc.

This year the event features 99 international premieres and films by hosts James Ivory, Barbara Kopel, Werner Herzog, Sergey Loznitsa.

Tribute

Of course, the festival is, among other things, also a tribute. The largest of these, The Art of Reality: Beyond Surveillance, will feature 20 films exploring the surveillance subgenre from its iconic inception (such as Nanook of the North) to its current development. The second dedication is dedicated to the genocide of Jews in Thessaloniki on the occasion of the completion on March 15 of the 80th anniversary of the departure of the first train from there to Auschwitz. As part of the tribute, the legendary “Shoah”, Claude Lanzmann’s almost ten-hour documentary on the Holocaust, will be screened in full. Another genocide, the Armenian genocide, is linked to Konstantinos Georgopoulos’ “New Homeland” shown in the “Open Horizons” section. Also worthy of special mention is the documentary Ithaca – The Battle to Free Julian Assange by Australian Ben Lawrence, which chronicles the relentless efforts of 76-year-old John Shipton, Assange’s father, from prison to hospital and court to acquit his son.

Two more important directors, one Greek and one foreign, will receive the honorary “Golden Alexander”: Stavros Psyllakis, whose ten films will tell us the stories of people living in the neighborhood in frontier situations, and the great Austrian Nikolaus Geirhalter, whose work will be known through nine films. Finally, this year Thessaloniki is turning its sights on Elefsina, the 2023 European Capital of Culture, and is inviting festival goers to discover a cultural itinerary that includes the work of the artist Adrian Pasi, the related three-day action Silla Tzoumerkas, and the gaze of documentary filmmaker Philippos Koutsaftis (“Agelastos Petra”) to Elefsina.

100 million euros from NSRF for EKOME

The corresponding ministerial decision was recently published in Diaygeia, according to which EKOME funding comes from the state fund for the NSRF Competitiveness program “Support for the production of audiovisual works in Greece”. In fact, the amount of 100 million euros is mentioned as an indicative cost, from which EKOME will be financed in order to continue its operations smoothly in the coming years. We remind you that, according to the recent government decision, the organization will be transferred to the Ministry of Culture, and it remains to be seen whether this will be implemented at the legislative level before the upcoming elections.