The full programme and all the parallel events of this year’s event, which this year is hosted at the TRIANON, NEWMAN and STUDIO New Star Art Cinema cinemas and the HELLENIC AMERICAN UNION, were announced on 15/11 by the Artistic Director of the festival, Ninos Mikelidis, and the Head of Market and Educational Activities, Vassilis Mazomenos, at the Press Conference organized by Panorama, at the L. Stavrakos School, while the panel was also attended by the Audiovisual Attaché of the French Institute of Greece, Aimé Besson, who referred to this year’s and more generally to the important, long-term cooperation between IFG and Panorama.
To view the timetable of the festival and the multitude of parallel events, tributes (John Cassavetes, Franz Kafka, Roger Korman, Betty Livanou, Stelios Charalampopoulos, Claude Sautet), masterclasses and workshops, visit the link: https://panoramafest.gr/
FESTIVAL KICK-OFF FILM – Athenian premiere
Thursday 21/11 @ ΤRΙΑΝΟΝ | 20.15
With the new film by Alexandros Avranas, “Quiet Life”, in the presence of the director and other contributors, Panorama premieres this year. The film had its world premiere in the parallel competition section of the Venice Film Festival, and the screening will be followed by a Q&A.
Sweden, 2018. A mysterious syndrome affecting refugee children is causing great concern among doctors and politicians. Sergei and Natalia are forced to flee their country after an attack that almost cost Sergei his life. The couple settle in Sweden with their two young daughters and await the decision of the Immigration Service on their asylum application. They try to live a normal life: they work hard, send their children to Swedish school, learn the language and endure regular checks by the authorities, hoping that one day they will obtain Swedish citizenship. But when their application is rejected, their youngest daughter, Katia, collapses and slips into an unexplained coma. As Sergei and Natalia face a moral dilemma, their endurance and determination are tested. Can they find the strength and hope they need to save their daughters? The film won the Interfilm Award at the Venice International Film Festival.
FESTIVAL CLOSING FILM – National premiere
Wednesday 27/11 @ ΤRΙΑΝΟΝ | 20.30
With the French film “Sarah Bernhardt, La Divine” (distributed by Rosebud 21), in a nationwide premiere, this year’s Panorama will close.
Before the start of the screening, the film’s distributor, Zenos Panagiotidis, will be awarded for his overall contribution to Greek cinema.
I TOLD YOU SO / TE L’ AVEVO DETTO
Italy– 2023 – Color– 100’
Director: Ginevra Elkann
The film will be screened in the presence of the protagonist, Valeria Golino, and the director, Ginevra Elkann. The screening will be followed by a Q&A.
QUIET LIFE
France, Greece, Germany, Esthonia, Sweden– 2024 – Color– 99’
Director: Alexandros Avranas
(opening film of the festival – presented in detail above)
CLOSE YOUR EYES / CERRAR LOS OJOS
Spain, Argentina– 2023 – Color– 169’
Director: Víctor Erice
MR. K
Netherlands, Norway, Belgium– 2024 – Color– 96’
Director: Tallulah Hazekamp Schwab
Crispin Glover returns in a starring role diving into Kafkaesque paranoia where a wandering magician spends the night in a hotel only to discover, the next morning, that he can’t escape. So he continues to “dive” deeper into this reality, meeting its unusual inhabitants along the way. Calling a play “Kafkaesque” is perhaps easy, but living up to that label is decidedly more challenging. However, the director pulls it off by creating a world like Charlie Kaufman’s, but a little less morbid and with the addition of plenty of humor and a bit of horror. Stijn Cole’s upbeat and slightly otherworldly contemporary orchestral score contributes to the effect accordingly. The film simply asks us to accept that one may not understand everything – and perhaps it’s better that way – while, at the same time, it functions as a sharp but not at all didactic social allegory.
BAUK
Serbia– 2024 – Color– 97’
Director.: Goran Radovanović
The screening will take place in the presence of the director.
Sava, his mother and younger brother live in a skyscraper in Belgrade. His father is absent as he works on a cargo ship. This normal life is interrupted by the bombing of Serbia. The school closes, a shelter becomes his new home and Milica, the daughter of the priest with whom Sava is in love, leaves the country. This anti-war film from our neighbouring country, by acclaimed director Goran Radovanović’s award-winning Enclave, deals with the consequences of the NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999 and how they affected a child’s perception of the world and his childhood, which is precisely why it is highly relevant today. Official participation in the Moscow International Film Festival.
PALAZZINA LAF
Italy– 2023 – Color– 99’
Director: Michele Riondino
Katerino is a worker at the Ilva factory in Taranto. When the company executives decide to use him as a spy to track down the workers they want to get rid of, Katerino begins to stalk his colleagues, looking for various reasons to denounce them. Inspired by real events, the film depicts the first documented case of workplace bullying in Italy at the deadly Ilva steelworks in Taranto in the late 1990s, and so the director’s very strong debut is a political drama of social implications in the tradition of Italian cinema, where he places the working class in front of the camera trying to give it a voice. Awarded by the Italian Critics Association for the screenplay, direction and acting and three David Di Donatello awards (acting and music).
SUMMER BROTHER / ZOMERVACHT /
The Netherlands, Belgium – 2023 – Color– 100’
Director: Joren Molter
During some sultry summer holidays, thirteen-year-old Brian, who lives with his father in a caravan in a remote location, is forced to care for his older brother Lucien, who is mentally disabled. But how can he make the right choices when he still has so much to discover about himself? Joren Molter’s debut feature is a coming-of-age film that raises serious moral dilemmas over the abrupt and sometimes violent coming of age of children with stark, raw yet human cinematography based on the cohesive dramatic structure and relationships of these three characters as they try to keep their innocence and empathy intact. Ecumenical Committee Award and Audience Award at the Transylvania International Film Festival.
AFRICA STAR
Cyprus- 2024 – B&W– 108’
Africa Star follows three generations of Cypriot women – mother, daughter and granddaughter – whose lives were tragically changed by one man’s inability to resist temptation. The film follows this journey through the decades: 1945, 1967 and 2008 where the now weakened octogenarian makes one last attempt to redeem himself from his guilt. The Cypriot director and writer won the Orpheus Award at the Los Angeles Greek Film Festival for this film.
THE ASYLUM SEEKERS
Cyprus– 2024 – Color, B&W– 97’
Director: Michalis Chapesiis
An inflatable boat unloads a group of asylum seekers on the shores of Euroville. The group runs over a body in the shelter. They decide they must go to the authorities to see how to dispose of the body. They go from office to office without being able to find a solution to the problem until they decide to burn the body outside their house. The Military Police are watching them as they try to escape…
THE SOCK
Cyprus– 2024 – Color- 90’
Director: Kyros Papavasileiou
The screening will take place in the presence of the director.
A director with financial problems has an accident that leaves him temporarily disabled. He gets help from a cousin who is permanently disabled. The director decides to make a film about the whole incident and the days he spends with the cousin, but everyone gets in the way of making the film, especially the girl who injured him.
GIANNIS IN THE CITIES
Greece– 2024 – B&W– 90’
Director: Εleni Alexandraki
The screening will take place in the presence of the director.
In 1949, Yiannis, the son of a partisan, is uprooted from the warmth of his home in the village because his grandmother is persuaded to hand him over to Queen Frederick’s Children’s Homes in the hope that her grandson will learn to read and write. In these institutions, where ideas and desires are manipulated, the child spends six of the most tender years of his life. Nightmares and dark feelings for his father haunt his heart… The true story of the author Yannis Attzakas.
PREMIERES
TREI KILOMETRI PANA LA CAPATUL LUMII
Emanuel PARVU, 2024, Rοmania, Color, 105’
(in collaboration with Cinobo)
Set in a conservative community in Romania’s Danube Delta, we see the journey of self-discovery of a gay teenager, Andy, who comes into conflict with the traditional values espoused by his parents and neighbours. Emanuel Parvu puts people’s bigotry and conformity under the microscope and how affection can be a threat in a community morally terrified of anything that threatens its traditional stability. With clinical detachment and long shots, it does not impose itself on the viewer’s emotions as it avoids easy identification with the trauma of the central character, as much as it emphasizes the reactions of those around him and the overall social fabric. Thus this painful story of oppression and rejection raises immediate questions for all of us about the reasons and consequences produced when we put ourselves in front of a distorting lens or deny the very reality and needs of people. Officially premiered at the Cannes Film Festival where it competed for the Palme d’Or and Queer Palm and won Best Film at the Sarajevo Film Festival.
TOXIC
Saule Bliuvaite, 2024, Lithuania, Color, 99’
(in collaboration with Cinobo)
For two teenage girls, enrolling in a local modelling school seems like an escape from the dead-end streets of their city. And while the promise of a better life pushes them to violate their bodies in increasingly extreme ways, they form a unique bond with each other to cope. An intense social critique of the ever-increasing objectification and exploitation of the female body in modern times, Lithuanian Saule Bliuvaite’s feature debut explores, based on her own similar experiences, with sensitivity, insight, poetry and directorial skill, the rawest of the rawest, dark and brutal corners of the human condition, while the critics universally hailed the two young actors who create a deeply complex, unexpected relationship, and who dramatically shock with their presence and skills as they simultaneously emphasize fragility and dignity in an oppressive environment. It swept the Locarno Film Festival with four awards, including the Golden Leopard, Ecumenical Award and Best First Feature Award, as well as a nomination for the European Film Academy’s FIPRESCI – European Discovery Award.
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