When friends and acquaintances from abroad come to Athens and turn to me for advice, I first of all suggest that they go to the summer cinema; indeed, there are few such unique experiences in the city, especially if they are not (quite) unusual, as, for example, the inhabitants of the Nordic countries. However, how do dozens of summer people work at this time in the capital and other places? Expectations leading up to the start of the season were especially high, in the first summer since the start of the pandemic, when the box office had a rich selection of films for all tastes.

“The picture is still ambiguous,” says Mr. Alkis Gounaris, head of the family business that owns the cinemas Elektra (Patision), Amiko (Halandri), Ekran (center), Vesna (N. Heraklion) ), The Garden (Moschato) and The New Talisman (Taurus), and continues: “Of course, there have been a few films released this year that have drawn people to theaters, but this is not necessarily the case for summer films. Simply put, the multiplex world has returned to multiplexes that were not operating at this time last year. In general, as summer cinemas, we are about the same level, if not slightly lower, compared to last summer. On the other hand, on the positive side, with… the blockbusters gone, some re-releases have found a place and are doing really well.”

Indeed, if you add up the total number of tickets sold since the beginning of June, you get 884,484 (as of July 24), which is significantly more than 619,744 for the same period last year.

Some films drew people to cinemas, mostly in multiplexes and to a lesser extent during the summer.

However, as we said, the lion’s share in 2022 belongs to multiplexes, which mainly show commercial success, such as Jurassic World: Dominion, Dead Phone, Thor: Love and Thunder, and so on. In total, approximately 3.3 million tickets were sold in the first seven months of the year, about 300,000 more than in 2021.

However, going back to summer, especially to the center of Athens, it seems that the reaction of the public revolves around … special screenings. Such, in fact, were the “Magnetic Fields” by Giorgos Gusis, for which more than 10,000 tickets were sold only in the cinemas “Riviera”, “Vox” and “Athenaia”. Their owner, Peggy Riga, says she’s happy. “We have already done a very good job since last year, and this year we continue. This is certainly related to tourism, especially in Exarchia, about 20% of the audience are foreigners who are delighted with the summer, for our part we try to have double subtitles in non-English films, and Greek in English-language films.

But it’s not just the first screenings: “Hitchcock’s reissues and Antonioni’s ‘Blow Up’ were very successful. The same with “Suddenly this summer”, which is organized by Ilias Fragulis in the “Riviera” for the sixth year. In addition, on the last Monday of each month, we show long films such as The Godfather 2, for example, and audience attendance is important there,” concludes Ms. Riga.