After yesterday’s premiere at Critics’ Week, its parallel competition section 75th Cannes Film Festival, the futuristic sci-fi short film by Evi Kalogiropoulou“On the Throne of Xerxes”, with George Mazonakis in the leading role, commissioned and produced by Onassis Culture, wins the important Canal + Award for short film. Canal + awarded the prize, accompanied by a cash prize, to the film “On the Throne of Xerxes” for the way it approached an ancient Greek story with parables that spring up in an extremely ingenious way in a strange landscape.
The journalist and presenter of the Cercle show on Canal +, Alain Kruger, likened Evi Kalogiropoulou and her work to the great French director Claire Denny and the movie “Beau travail” and urged the audience to definitely watch the movie. Evi Kalogiropoulou, a big fan of Denny’s work, received the award with excitement and warmly thanked the Onassis Foundation for the assignment and support, and her collaborators, Aphrodite Panagiotakou, Director of Culture of the Onassis Foundation, who had the editing of the film, and George Mazonakis starring. The film will be shown on the important French television network Canal +, which highlights the work of great filmmakers from around the world.
The film, an enigmatic dystopia where the visual subdues the emotional, with background of a shipyard in Perama, was presented in its first version (entitled “I belong to me”) at the Festival “You and AI: Through the Algorithmic Lens” (24.06-25.07.21) held by Stegi at Pedion tou Areos, under the artistic supervision of Aphrodite Panagiotakou. The shooting of the film took place at Hellenic Shipyards SA in Perama, in June 2021.
The visual artist and director Evi Kalogiropoulou has linked her film career to the Cannes Film Festival. Specifically, in 2020 the short film of “Motorway 65” had participated in the official program of the festival claiming the Golden Palm. Last year, her own “Cora”, a feature film project under development, part of an EKK funding program, won an award at the L ‘Atelier of the Cinefondation in Cannes.
At yesterday’s screening of the film in Cannes, George Mazonakis thanked Evi Kalogiropoulou who gave him the opportunity to transform into a film protagonist and Aphrodite Panagiotakou, who had the artistic direction. The Director of Culture of the Onassis Foundation, Aphrodite Panagiotakou said: “We are very proud of this remarkable woman and we know how much effort it takes for a filmmaker to create. We are very happy to bring together people from different walks of life, such as George Mazonakis, who is a famous singer and is not supposed to come from the high strata of culture but in a way he does, while Evi Kalogiropoulou is the man who knows that when something is good, then it works. “The fact that we are here today means that this meeting went as we hoped.”
In “Throne of Xerxes” Kalogiropoulou’s gaze, as in “Motorway 65”, is focused on the edges of the wider Athenian urban landscape and specifically on the shipbuilding and repair zone of Perama – in the sea where Xerxes lost his fleet – which seems dystopian Backdrop of today’s alienated people. The screenplay is signed by George Teltzidis, the music by Kid Moxie, the cinematography by Evan Maragoudakis, the editing by George Zafeiris and the sets by Evelina Darzenta and Anna Zotou. On the side of George Mazonakis, are Angela Bruscu, Myrto Kontoni, Xenia Dania, Lorenzo Sarzan, Kevin Zans Ansong, Jordan Genidogan and Vassilis Koutsogiannis. Production Execution: Neda Film.
A few words about the movie
In the work dystopia of the shipyards of Perama, the chronic prohibition of physical contact has turned human interactions into eerie simulations of a stifled sensuality that transcends the heteronormal stereotypes of desire. Under the suspicion of the existence of an ubiquitous but invisible control mechanism, follows the narration of George, the oldest worker and manager in the yard, outlining human relationships as they are formed in an Orwellian daily life where the visual subdues the emotional.
George, once a month, makes the route from Perama, opposite Salamina. He, like the young workers, looks at one of the mountains of Perama, one opposite, without knowing what to expect or what to do.
On one of the peaks of Mount Egaleo, which are part of the Municipality of Perama, which in ancient times was called Amfiali, is considered to be the place from which Xerxes watched the crash of the Persian fleet in the Battle of Salamis, in 480 BC. This peak is called by the inhabitants of the area “Throne of Xerxes”. As if in the same position, Kalogiropoulou watches from a distance her heroes. a gloomy ritual that suppresses human desire.
In her film, Kalogiropoulou chooses to talk about the human body, beauty, the futility of work, the conditions of a paranoid surveillance, but also about blood and separation, gender, sexual desire and its limits.
The role of George Mazonakis appears enigmatic and autobiographical, respectively. Enigmatic, as to whether it is human or machine? Where does it come from and why can it finally break such a deep-rooted rule of repression? What kind of eroticism does it exude? Autobiographical, as the Greek singer returns to Perama and his father’s place of work.
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