Greece’s Thessaloniki International Film Festival returns this night for its sixty fifth version with a screening of Maria, the newest characteristic from Chilean director Pablo Larraín.
The pic, which stars Angelina Jolie and debuted at this 12 months’s Venice Movie Competition, will display screen for audiences at Thessaloniki’s Olympia Theatre following a gap ceremony.
Operating 31 Oct – 10 Nov, Thessaloniki will this 12 months display screen 12 movies in its worldwide competitors. Titles embody Edinburgh-based filmmaker Laura Carreira’s haunting debut characteristic On Falling. The pic, which debuted at Toronto and landed the Sutherland Award for debut movie at London, follows Aurora, a younger Portuguese lady who struggles to make ends meet throughout one week in her adopted dwelling of Glasgow, Scotland. Different titles embody Ariane Labed’s debut characteristic September Says and the buzzy Palestinian characteristic To A Land Unknown. A complete of 252 characteristic and brief movies will probably be screened at Thessaloniki. The worldwide competitors sits alongside two sidebar strands, Meet the Neighbors and Fiction Ahead for regional and experimental works. The pageant will shut with Joshua Oppenheimer’s fiction debut The Finish.
Headline attendees this 12 months embody Juliette Binoche, Ralph Fiennes, and Matt Dillon. The three actors will all be handed honorary awards. Greek filmmaker Panos Koutras, finest recognized for works like A Girl’s Manner and Dodo, can even be honored on the pageant.
Under, Orestis Andreadakis, Thessaloniki Worldwide Movie Competition creative director, breaks down this 12 months’s version. Andreadakis additionally discusses security on the pageant following an anti-LGBT assault at Thessaloniki’s documentary festival in March and the way what he described as political extremism is making it more durable to mount movie occasions.
DEADLINE: How has prep for this 12 months’s pageant gone?
ORESTIS ANDREADAKIS: Getting ready a pageant is a really peculiar job since you are primarily making ready an imaginary occasion. It’s not like some other occasion as a result of as quickly because it’s completed it disappears since you are working with films. We attempt to gather movement footage from world wide and mission them for our viewers. We discuss with administrators, producers, and actors. After which puff, all the things is within the air. However within the meantime, that is the magic of a movie pageant.
DEADLINE: How has the method of attracting movies been? There may be plenty of discuss this 12 months being tough for festivals due to the Hollywood strikes?
ANDREADAKIS: Now we have the identical quantity of films this 12 months. Now we have 252 kind of yearly. However to let you know the reality, sure, over the previous couple of years it’s been tougher due to the assorted ongoing conditions world wide. To start with, in our neighborhood, there are two bloody wars. In Ukraine and Palestine. Second, the local weather disaster is getting worse yearly and third, there was a rise in political extremism. As a pageant, we need to help filmmakers and artists to speak about these tough conditions and issues.
DEADLINE: There was an anti-LGBTQ assault in Thessaloniki throughout the documentary pageant in March. The town is historically very welcoming to all, in order that was stunning. Will that assault change how the pageant runs?
ANDREADAKIS: Sure, the documentary pageant in March was tough primarily due to the assault that was because of the poster we had chosen. However happily, it didn’t final. It was solely throughout the pageant. Just a few days after it was calm. So for the second, we haven’t had any comparable issues. However that is the symptom of the tough conditions we stay in.
DEADLINE: Thessaloniki now has a podcast competitors. Why did you determine to incorporate podcasts within the official lineup?
ANDREADAKIS: Sure, we’ve had the part in earlier editions and I consider we’re both the primary or second pageant globally to incorporate a podcast programme. We’re very happy with this as a result of podcasts are actually a sort of cinema with out footage. It’s very intriguing. And now, the viewers loves it. After they’re going from one place to the subsequent or they’re ready to see a film, they’ve the prospect to listen to a podcast.
DEADLINE: So pageant goers can simply signal on to the pageant web site and hearken to the choice of podcasts?
ANDREADAKIS: Sure, we choose the podcasts the identical method we choose the films. After which you possibly can go to our web site and listen to the podcasts.
DEADLINE: This 12 months Carlo Chatrian is visitor curating a sidebar titled ‘We, the Monster’. Final 12 months, Dennis Lim curated a piece. Why do you invite visitor curators?
ANDREADAKIS: As a result of it’s at all times good to have one other voice. An exterior voice. A contemporary voice, they usually convey one thing new and completely different. It’s at all times nice to convey one thing from outdoors that may enrich our opinions and programme. Final 12 months it was Dennis Lim and this 12 months we labored along with Carlos Chatrian to pick 22 films. I feel the theme could be very related as a result of slowly our society is turning into extra monstrous. There are additionally some individuals who consider individuals who have completely different backgrounds to them are monsters. However they aren’t. So there are two sides to this.
DEADLINE: Panos Koutras will obtain an honorary award this 12 months. Are you able to discuss a little bit about why he is a vital Greek filmmaker to honor?
ANDREADAKIS: Panos Koutras is among the most necessary, filmmakers of contemporary up to date Greek cinema. He’s one of many first filmmakers right here to debate LGBT themes, even in his brief movies. He additionally speaks about minorities and he invented a brand new, fully private cinematic view. While you see only one minute of a Panos Koutras movie you immediately acknowledge that’s Panos Koutras fashion, and that’s very uncommon.
