email print share on Facebook share on Twitter share on LinkedIn share on reddit pin on Pinterest

FESTIVALS Greece

European cinema in the shadow of the Parthenon

by 

The Athens International Film Festival opened yesterday evening with Persepolis [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Marc-Antoine Robert
interview: Marjane Satrapi, Vincent Pa…
film profile
]
, Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud’s animated black and white Cannes award-winner (Focus), and through September 30 will bring the best of international cinema to the Greek capital.

Divided into six sections – not counting the retrospectives (Max Ophüls, on the 50th anniversary of his death, and India’s Buddhadeb Dasgupta), tributes and special events – the festival is celebrating its 13th edition with a programme highly attentive to European cinema.

(The article continues below - Commercial information)

The Competition, juried by film students from throughout Europe, features a number of films by women: from 27 year-old Céline Sciamma’s Un Certain Regard title Water Lilies [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
, a delicate look at adolescent desire, to the directorial debut of Dutch actress Tamar van den Dop, Blind [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
, a Dutch/Belgian/Bulgarian co-production.

In “Music and Films”, dedicated to the relationship between the seven nights and the seventh art, Athens is beating Rome to the punch with Sigur Ròs – Heima, the Icelandic documentary (directed by Canada’s Dean DeBlois) announced in the Italian festival’s Extra section.

However, Europe features above all in the non-competitive Panorama section with: In Memory of Myself [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
by Saverio Costanzo (at this year’s Berlinale); Irish films Once by John Carney and Lenny Abrahmson’s Garage [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Ed Guiney
interview: Jean-François Deveau
interview: Lenny Abrahamson
film profile
]
; French titles Before I Forget [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
by Jacques Nolot and Boxes [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
by Jane Birkin, which share common autobiographical and emotional elements; and Swedish director Roy Andersson’s You, the Living [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Pernilla Sandström
interview: Roy Andersson
film profile
]
(which he brings to Athens “only” seven years after his preceding film, a record for this not very prolific filmmaker).

European titles in other sections include Milky Way by Hungarian talent Benedek Fliegauf, the disturbing Inside [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
by Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury and David Mackenzie’s Hallam Foe [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
.

Other events include restored classics, guilty pleasures (in the Grindhouse section devoted to the most extreme genre films) and shorts. The festival will close with Todd Haynes’ I’m Not There.

(The article continues below - Commercial information)

(Translated from Italian)

Did you enjoy reading this article? Please subscribe to our newsletter to receive more stories like this directly in your inbox.

Privacy Policy