Thessaloniki Film Festival Opens With Zvyagintsev's 'Minotaur'

The Thessaloniki International Film Festival opens its 67th edition this week with Andrey Zvyagintsev's Cannes Grand Prix winner "Minotaur," and runs through Nov. 15. A total of 258 films will screen across the festival's sections, with 10 titles competing for the Golden Alexander, the event's top prize.

Artistic director Orestis Andreadakis, a writer and critic now in his tenth year leading Greece's oldest and most prestigious film festival, is candid that this year doesn't feel routine. "This year's festival takes place during one of the most difficult and volatile periods for humanity: wars, massacres, the rise of the far right and neo-fascism, social unrest, uncertainty about the development of artificial intelligence and the climate crisis," he told Variety. "All of this is part of our shared reality, and of course it is reflected in this year's selection."

What does the festival hope to achieve?

The programming has a deliberate moral register. "We hope that through the films of the 67th TIFF we can offer a little hope, ease pain and resist horror, polarization, hostility and dehumanization," Andreadakis said. "Films can broaden our horizons, sharpen our awareness and critical thinking, and shape us in unexpected ways."

The opener made that case itself. "Minotaur," by the two-time Academy Award nominee ("Leviathan," "Loveless"), is a trenchant portrayal of despair and corruption in Vladimir Putin's Russia, and will represent France in the international feature film Oscar race. Andreadakis called it "a powerful and unsparing portrait of a society trapped in its own labyrinth of fear and moral compromise" and "exactly the kind of cinema we believe in: brave, demanding and able to sharpen our awareness of the world we live in."

The festival closes Nov. 15 with "Woman Unknown," the Venice Golden Lion winner from May el-Toukhy, with Venice best actress winner Mathilde Arcel attending.

Who's coming to Thessaloniki?

The guest list is heavy on prize-winners:

• Oliver Laxe ("Sirat"), who won the Golden Alexander in 2019 with "Fire Will Come," curates the sidebar "Welcome to the Desert" and gives a talk.
• Emin Alper receives a tribute, including his Berlinale Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize winner "Salvation."
• Fatih Akin presents "Ghost Song," which opened San Sebastian.
• Composer and conductor Stavros Xarchakos and filmmaker Nikos Grammatikos receive honorary Golden Alexander Awards.

The competition lineup includes Walter Thompson-Hernández's Sundance premiere "If I Go Will They Miss Me," Sarah Arnold's Cannes Directors' Fortnight comedy "Too Many Beasts," and the Brazilian gay erotic thriller "The Riverbank" by Matheus Farias and Enock Carvalho, a prizewinner at Locarno and Rio.

How strong is Greek cinema this year?

Strong enough to anchor the event. Three Greek films compete for the Golden Alexander: Konstantina Kotzamani's Un Certain Regard premiere "Titanic Ocean," Efthimis Kosemund Sanidis' Karlovy Vary competitor "A Whole Person Almost," and Jacqueline Lentzou's "A Day in the Life of Jo: Chapter Phaedra," which won best director in Venice's Horizons strand. In all, 26 Greek features and 28 shorts screen at the festival, seven of the features in international competition. "Greek cinema is in a great place right now," Andreadakis said.

The industry arm, Agora, remains central to that. "The festival does more than give a film a slot in its program," Andreadakis noted, describing how directors, producers, distributors, screenwriters, technicians and actors network there and form international partnerships. The festival has also become a gathering point for filmmakers from the Eastern Mediterranean and Black Sea regions at the tail end of the fall circuit.

Looking back on a decade that included rethinking "the very idea of a film festival" during COVID, Andreadakis frames the future plainly: bring younger audiences back to the shared experience of cinema, and "make Thessaloniki a key hub for European cinema, a place where projects are born, where new ideas surface, where collaborations take place."