The Berlin Film Festival or The Greek Film Festival in Berlin under the direction of Sofia Stavrianidou is no other Greek festival with Greek films abroad. It has been a fixed appointment for ten years at Babylon Cinema in Berlin with quality choices that runs through annual Greek film production, compassionate and covering many genres: feature and short films, documentaries, pop cinema, high-aesthetic films.

This year, among other things, we stood out two documentaries. One of them the “front” directed by the filmmaker Alkistiswhich lives in Berlin. An x -ray of the interior of the historic free self -managed “Front” theater in Psirri in Athens, on the fragments of a homonymous printing house of the 1930s. A living theatrical organization, identified with its occupations, which has experienced periods of flowering, declines, disasters, state padlocks, bazama, and social struggles, claims, such as in the years of the economic crisis.

The “Front” It is a place that housed and continues to housing artistic creation and sometimes avant -garde, as well as collectives or minorities seeking space and way of expression. For the creator of the documentary “Front” the occupation of an abandoned space, such as “Front”, in order to become a field of free and indifferent expression, political, social, artistic, and the constant battle with the principles, reflect the once -loud and at times the most recent battle of the Greek and at times. of opinion, a battle to give room to the different, the unexpected, the one that does not fit into the urban molds and ultimately represents another voice and another social vision.

The “front” of the “front” is reminiscent of the practice of “bazama” as it did in Tempi, says Alkistis Kafetzi. The closure of a self -managed art space, which only causes the music, the image, the image is as if its oxygen lacks a portion of citizens who chooses to express itself. “A society that cannot dream of utopias dies,” she said after the screening of her documentary.

The documentary, however, also raises the issue of the realistic survival of the “Front” theater, through attempts to agree with the municipal or state authorities. An opportunity, as lawyer Ioanna Kurtovik points out, has been lost in the past. Actor Vassilis Koukalani, who was also found to show out the documentary in Berlin, expressed reflection on a possible “alienation” of the original mission of space and the risk of simply turning into an art space that “closes” one another.

The roots of the Greek #MeToo – and the battle that continues

Another documentary that stood out and even won the Festival Documentary Award is her “Tack” Vania Turner For the beginnings of Greek #metoo in the area of ​​sailing. It all started when Olympian Sofia Bekatorou revealed in 2020 her rape by a Greek sailing agent, when she was still an active athlete. Her revelations created a shock wave, the Greek #Meto. The title is borrowed from sailing and change of cruise when conditions require or are against the prescribed course.

One of the first cases that came to light was that of her Amalia Provelangia young sailor who had been victimized by sexual abuse by her coach at the age of ten to thirteen. The documentary watches the parallel life and the close relationship of trust that developed between the two women until the trial of the Amalia Aburus in the first instance. Stress, trauma, the path to extroversion and the disclosure of sexual abuse cases in the midst of social stigma, ignorance, lack of protection of victims and mechanisms in general preventive enter the Vania Terner cinematic microscope.

Turner chose to illuminate the case on the part of Amalia. It was the choice of conscious, as she said, to take a position clearly in favor of Amalia and to highlight the systemic anchors, stereotypes and the residues of patriarchy that exist deeply still rooted not only in society but also in the hard core of justice. As he characteristically said in a discussion that followed at Kino Babylon, not only the criminal acts of the perpetrator themselves, but also the way the victim is dealt with by the judiciary, with a lack of education in court psychology, are shocked.

The perpetrator was eventually sentenced to 13 years of imprisonment for a minor and was found innocent of rape. Sofia Beckatorou’s move and the court case of Amalia Provencelengi paved the way for many complaints of sexual abuse in the field of sports, arts and academic community. Some took the path of justice. But the road is still long.