10/01/2011

After creating buzz at the Thessaloniki fest market (see news), Argyris Papadimitropoulos’ sophomore project, Wasted Youth, has been selected to open the 40th edition of the International Film Festival Rotterdam (January 26 - February 6).

Papadimitropoulos was crowned king of the local blockbuster when his debut feature Bank Bang became the top-earning Greek title at the 2009 box office (see news) with over 380,000 admissions, almost double that of S.E.X., that year’s second best domestic effort.

His second feature – co-written and co-directed with Ecuador-born, German-raised Jan Vogel – splits its focus between a young skateboarder getting ready to cruise the streets and a hard-working, middle-aged man on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

Produced by Papadimitropoulos for his Oxymoron Films and Yorgos Karnavas for Stefi Productions, “shooting began with no more than five pages of script” say the filmmakers, noting it was “a story that had to be done now or never. All we knew was that we wanted to work together and, more importantly, we wanted to make that movie immediately”.

Because of the tight time frame and a mostly amateur cast, the film was shot in a highly improvisational manner as well as on a very tight schedule.

Handling the title abroad, executive producer Konstantinos Kontovrakis tells Cineuropa current foreign interest in Greece’s socio-political climate “gives the film a head start [since] regardless of its subject the film’s real main character is modern-day Athens, and as a resident of a foreign country I can tell you that current Greek affairs are understandably a very hot topic abroad, for they form an image of what might befall the rest of the western world.” He adds, however, “none of this would matter if we didn’t have a very good movie on our hands”.