The Greek presence in 72nd Berlin International Film Festivalas three Greek films (“The City and the City”, “Memoirs of a (teenage) storm”, “Vancouver”) participate in this year’s event, which starts today Thursday and will be held exclusively in natural spaces, strictly adhering to the measures security.
Christos Passalis and Sylla Tzoumerka’s film “The City and the City” about the history of the Jewish community of Thessaloniki will have its world premiere at the Official Encounters Section of the Berlinale. The two renowned artists return creatively to their hometown and co-direct a film structured in six chapters, a prologue and an epilogue, where space and time are intertwined in an enigmatic way.
“The City and the City is a film that was shot in just 14 days and tells in six chapters the history of the Jewish community of Thessaloniki for five decades, from 1930 to 1980, with the modern city and its daily life being constantly present, often in sudden ways. We are very happy that “The City and the City” will meet audiences for the first time as a film, in the Encounters Competition section of the Berlin Film Festival, an extremely restless and lively section. The film, after all, goes to its 87 minutes on the border between fiction, documentary and essay film. “A large cast of our favorite actors, together with amateurs from the city, give flesh and blood to the faces of this community that was uprooted and annihilated in the most violent way …”, Christos Passalis and Syllas Tzoumerkas declare to the Athenian-Macedonian News Agency .
This is a co-production of the National Opera and the Homemade Films of Maria Drandaki, in collaboration with the Thessaloniki Film Festival, curated by Orestis Andreadakis. The production was supported by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (ISN), in the context of its donation for the creation of the anniversary program of ELS for the 200 years since the Greek Revolution of 1821.
“Memoirs of a (teenage) storm”
Sofia Georgovasili’s third short film, “Memoir of a (Teenage) Storm” (“Memoir of a Veering Storm”), will have its world premiere at the Berlinale, at the Generation 14plus Competition Section.
“Memoir of a Veering Storm” is an adulthood story set in an 8-hour school day. One September morning a storm approaches the city. A 15-year-old girl pops it out of school and with the help of her friend goes to the hospital to have an abortion. A fact that brings her abruptly confronted with her coming of age.
“The film is a story of adulthood, with an issue that we have theoretically solved for years now as a society. And yet, I see with sadness that it is not as solved as it seemed “, says Sofia Georgovasili to APE-MPE, who started writing the script by clicking on the story of a friend, who when she heard it shocked her.
“I did not consider myself writing about a contemporary topic. I thought I was writing more about a timeless topic. It was a few years ago and the super-conservative “let me live” movements had not yet made their appearance. Nor were conferences on fertility organized and spots that incriminate any childless 40-year-old woman. And as time went on, the complexity of the issue grew before my eyes inside and outside the borders. But also the complexity of my venture, as finding funding was a challenge. Even the places were hard to find. The private schools I approached turned down our request to return. The answer I got was “the topic you have chosen is difficult…”.
The film, however, was made and is on the side of the female bodies that stand naked in the face of the storms of the time. And it is dedicated to all the cyclones we experience in every difficult decision we make in our lives. “Her participation in this year’s Berlinale makes us happy and proud”, she notes.
This is the third short film of the actress and director, four years after “Preparation” and two after “Cedar Wolf”, produced by Foss productions, co-produced by Onassis culture, with the support of the Hellenic Cinema Center and the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung Greece.
“Vancouver”
Artemis Anastasiadou, the short film “The Vancouver”, will make its international premiere at the Generation Kplus Department of the 72nd Berlinale. This is the latest film of the author who, a few years ago, with “I am Mackenzie”, won the award for best short film at SXSW 2019 in Texas and the Tonia Marketaki award at the Drama Festival.
Two brothers, a spell, wounded landscapes and an inevitable escape. “Vancouver”, a daily migration story, will become the chronicle of an extinction. It is the first film that Artemis Anastasiadou shoots in the Greek countryside, in which he collaborated with amateur actors and included the landscape and its truth as an additional dramatic element in her narrative.
“Vancouver” was filmed in Milaki, a small village, trapped between two huge factories, in the area of ​​Aliveri, in Evia. Following a neo-realist approach, I worked with people who live there, and wrote the whole story, incorporating the landscape and its peculiarities, but also local legends into the structure of the story. The film examines issues such as brotherly love, loss, immigration, unemployment and the abandonment of the Greek countryside through the eyes of an eleven-year-old girl “, Artemis Anastasiadou explains to APE-MPE.
Regarding the selection of the film at the Berlin Film Festival, she states that it is a huge honor. “It means acknowledging that we have managed to make a feature film about the childhood experience, which tells the story with the simplicity and purity with which children approach the world, without being gifted and moralizing,” he adds.
The film made its Greek premiere at the Drama Short Film Festival in September 2021, where it won a Special Jury Prize and an Honorary Distinction for Best Actor (Vassilis Koutsogiannis), while it also participated in the competition program of the 24th International Film Festival. and Youth (2021). It is a production of Massive Productions with the support of EKK, ERT SA, SEE Cinema Network.
Curtain with François Ozon
A regular visitor of the Berlin Festival will “raise” the curtain of this year’s event, which will be held again live from 10 to 20 February.
The reason for the French director François Ozon, awarded in 2019 with the Silver Bear – Grand Commission Award for “Will of God”, who signs the opening film “Peter von Kant”. The film is inspired by Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s classic drama “Petra von Kant’s Bitter Tears” (1972), starring Denny Menoshe, Isabel Azzani and Hannah Sigula.
The artistic director of the Festival, Carlo Satrian, commented: “We are excited as we welcome François Ozon back to the Festival, but also happy that we are starting the event with his new film. For this year’s start we were looking for a film that could bring lightness and liveliness to our melancholy routine. “Peter von Kant is a theatrical display of power around the concept of lockdown that speaks to love, jealousy, seduction and humor, indeed, everything that makes life and art inextricably linked.”
The official program of the Festival will be shown in the halls between February 10-16 and then will be repeated until the 20th of the month.
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