Thessaloniki International Film Festival Kicks Off

The Thessaloniki International Film Festival opens for its 63rd edition on Thursday after a two-year absence caused by the pandemic.
According to Eleni Stamatoukou's article published in BalkanInsight, one of Greece’s most significant film festivals, the Thessaloniki International Film Festival, kicks off on Thurday after an absence of two years during the pandemic. From November 3 to 13, films from around the world will fill the northern Greek city’s cinema halls again.
The festival starts on Thursday with Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans. Charlotte Gainsbourg will present her new film, Night Visitors by Michael Ers. Fatih Akin will present his new movie, Rhinegold. The latest and most notable Balkan films, as well as excellent short films, are also included, like Emin Alper’s Burning Days and Miloš Pušić’s Working Class Heroes.
Marking the tenth anniversary of the death of Theodoros Angelopoulos, the Festival is holding a tribute to the great creator who marked Greek cinema with his work forever.
“It’s not a coincidence that one of our centerpiece spotlights this year centres around Theo Angelopoulos’s film ‘Reconstruction’: It’s been ten years since Angelopoulos’s death, but this might also be a year that cinema somehow ‘reconstructs’ itself after a very rough and gloomy period,” Yorgos Krassakopoulos, the festival’s head of programming, told BIRN.
Special tributes will be made to Indigenous Cinema, American filmmaker Eve Heller, British (with Greek roots) director Peter Strickland, filmmaker Peter Tscherkassky, an iconic figure of the Central-European avant-garde, and to the great Yugoslav director Aleksandar Petrović.
“Hopefully with a strong program that selects the best of independent and upcoming talent and a large number of acclaimed directors and eagerly awaited films, we will experience a very strong festival edition, with full theaters and excited audiences,” Krassakopoulos said.
“From our tribute to Indigenous cinema to the films of Peter Strickland and those of Peter Tscherkassky, Eve Heller or Aleksandar Petrović, and of course our competition sections and main slate of films, we believe we have a plethora of offerings that illuminate a brilliant year for cinema and hopefully cinema-going as well,” he added.
BIRN