Marianna Economou’s examination of an Athenian TB hospital and its residents may be geographically specific but it has an emotional resonance that is universal. Her film begins as a dive into an archive before opening out into a sort of variation on Who Do You Think You Are? Her knack for winning over the audience is evidenced by the audience award her film picked up at Thessaloniki Documentary Film Festival.
The starting point is a pile of suitcases that were thrown into a skip at Sotiria hospital after being found laying in a forgotten room. When women a couple of floors up spotted it happening they became curious and, on opening the cases, found them to be full of bundles of belongings that were once owned by patients who had died there when it was a post-Second World War tuberculosis clinic.
The contents are the starting point for Economou’s film.
The starting point is a pile of suitcases that were thrown into a skip at Sotiria hospital after being found laying in a forgotten room. When women a couple of floors up spotted it happening they became curious and, on opening the cases, found them to be full of bundles of belongings that were once owned by patients who had died there when it was a post-Second World War tuberculosis clinic.
The contents are the starting point for Economou’s film.
- 4/21/2024
- by Amber Wilkinson
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
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Palestinian title If These Stones Could Talk has won the first ever Iefta (International Emerging Film Talents Association) Award for Best Documentary in Development, worth €10,000, at Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival’s Agora industry event.
The film, directed by Hana Elias and produced by Asmahan Bkera, follows a Palestinian man’s return to his hometown to build a house for his family. As the family tends their land, they confront their estrangement from the country as Palestinian citizens of Israel.
“With warmth and authenticity, this project portrays a family’s relationship with both each other and their land in an intimate way.
The film, directed by Hana Elias and produced by Asmahan Bkera, follows a Palestinian man’s return to his hometown to build a house for his family. As the family tends their land, they confront their estrangement from the country as Palestinian citizens of Israel.
“With warmth and authenticity, this project portrays a family’s relationship with both each other and their land in an intimate way.
- 3/14/2024
- ScreenDaily
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The 26th edition of the Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival (TiDF) kicks off today (March 7) with 12 features screening in international competition.
Several titles are making their world premiere at the festival including Johatsu - Into Thin Air from Andreas Hartmann and Arata Mori about the thousands of people who disappear in Japan each year.
Also playing is Sundance award-winner A New Kind Of Wilderness from Silje Evensmo Jacobsen. The Norweigan film, which won the grand jury prize in documentary, follows a family living in the wild who are forced to confront contemporary society after a tragic event.
Fellow Sundance-award winner Nocturnes...
Several titles are making their world premiere at the festival including Johatsu - Into Thin Air from Andreas Hartmann and Arata Mori about the thousands of people who disappear in Japan each year.
Also playing is Sundance award-winner A New Kind Of Wilderness from Silje Evensmo Jacobsen. The Norweigan film, which won the grand jury prize in documentary, follows a family living in the wild who are forced to confront contemporary society after a tragic event.
Fellow Sundance-award winner Nocturnes...
- 3/7/2024
- ScreenDaily
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Exclusive: The Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival’s industry-focused Agora section has selected 12 projects from 11 countries for this year’s Thessaloniki Pitching Forum and 11 films from 16 countries for the Agora Docs in Progress sidebar. Scroll down for the full list of projects.
All selected projects are from Southeastern Europe and the Mediterranean region.
The re-shaped Thessaloniki Pitching Forum is the festival’s co-financing and co-production forum for documentaries in development. Recent projects that have passed through the program include Boylesque, which premiered at Hot Docs 2022, Dead Sea Guardians, which premiered at Haifa Iff (2021) and was screened in Thessaloniki (2022), Karaoke Nation premiered at Cph: Dox (2022), A Steady Job premiered at Visions du Reel (2022), We Will Not Fade Away premiered at Berlinale 2023 and Mighty Afrin (Greece) premiered at Thessaloniki Idf 2023 and won the WWF Award.
This year, the Thessaloniki Pitching Forum has secured three new awards for its participants.
All selected projects are from Southeastern Europe and the Mediterranean region.
The re-shaped Thessaloniki Pitching Forum is the festival’s co-financing and co-production forum for documentaries in development. Recent projects that have passed through the program include Boylesque, which premiered at Hot Docs 2022, Dead Sea Guardians, which premiered at Haifa Iff (2021) and was screened in Thessaloniki (2022), Karaoke Nation premiered at Cph: Dox (2022), A Steady Job premiered at Visions du Reel (2022), We Will Not Fade Away premiered at Berlinale 2023 and Mighty Afrin (Greece) premiered at Thessaloniki Idf 2023 and won the WWF Award.
This year, the Thessaloniki Pitching Forum has secured three new awards for its participants.
- 2/8/2024
- by Zac Ntim
- Deadline Film + TV
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On Tuesday, Alexander Payne’s “Downsizing” opened the 2nd Evia Film Project, in the presence of the two-time Oscar-winning director.
The green initiative was launched by the Thessaloniki Film Festival last year to offer support to Northern Evia following the devastating 2021 wildfires. The event runs to June 24 with an enhanced program.
The films of this year’s edition are a mix of both classics and recent hits, feature films and documentaries. They have been selected to raise awareness, inform, incite to action, bring to light the repercussions of human-driven activities and mankind’s relation to the environment and, last but not least, praise nature’s magic.
Ten films play at this year’s Evia Film Project, which are as follows:
The previously mentioned “Downsizing”; “We Come as Friends” by Hubert Sauper; Dimitris Trompoukis’ “Roots”; “White Plastic Sky” by Tibor Bánóczki and Sarolta Szabó; Juliana Penaranda-Loftus, Brad Allgood and Graham Townsley...
The green initiative was launched by the Thessaloniki Film Festival last year to offer support to Northern Evia following the devastating 2021 wildfires. The event runs to June 24 with an enhanced program.
The films of this year’s edition are a mix of both classics and recent hits, feature films and documentaries. They have been selected to raise awareness, inform, incite to action, bring to light the repercussions of human-driven activities and mankind’s relation to the environment and, last but not least, praise nature’s magic.
Ten films play at this year’s Evia Film Project, which are as follows:
The previously mentioned “Downsizing”; “We Come as Friends” by Hubert Sauper; Dimitris Trompoukis’ “Roots”; “White Plastic Sky” by Tibor Bánóczki and Sarolta Szabó; Juliana Penaranda-Loftus, Brad Allgood and Graham Townsley...
- 6/21/2023
- by Tara Karajica
- Variety Film + TV
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As the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival winds down, filmmaker and Greek Documentary Association (Gda) president Marianna Economou points to great strides taken by the local industry in recent years, while adding that more support is needed to sustain its growth and development.
As the head of the Gda, Economou oversees an organization that was founded in 2013 with a goal “to support Greek creative documentary as a distinct cinematic genre in Greece and to work for its further recognition and promotion internationally,” she says.
The industry’s output is steadily growing, as witnessed this week in Thessaloniki, where the festival’s 23rd edition included 72 short and feature-length Greek documentary films.
But financing documentaries in Greece remains an uphill battle, with the Greek Film Center and public broadcaster Ert the de facto sources of all local funding. “It is extremely difficult to produce a film based on Greek funding alone, and even if...
As the head of the Gda, Economou oversees an organization that was founded in 2013 with a goal “to support Greek creative documentary as a distinct cinematic genre in Greece and to work for its further recognition and promotion internationally,” she says.
The industry’s output is steadily growing, as witnessed this week in Thessaloniki, where the festival’s 23rd edition included 72 short and feature-length Greek documentary films.
But financing documentaries in Greece remains an uphill battle, with the Greek Film Center and public broadcaster Ert the de facto sources of all local funding. “It is extremely difficult to produce a film based on Greek funding alone, and even if...
- 7/4/2021
- by Christopher Vourlias
- Variety Film + TV
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Berlinale 2021: Honouring the memory of Dimitri Eipides, the festival has initiated a development grant at Berlinale Talents. The Newcomers prize is also taking his name. Through a number of initiatives, the Thessaloniki International Film Festival is honouring Dimitri Eipides, the founder of the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival (Tdf) and for many years the director of Thessaloniki Film Festival organisation. Starting with the Doc Station of Berlinale Talents, the Thessaloniki International Film Festival is introducing a Development Grant of €5,000 dedicated to Eipides’ memory. The inaugural award was bestowed upon the documentary project Dragons by Brazilian writer-director Miguel Antunes Ramos. The jury, comprising Israeli producer, distributor and sales agent Philippa Kowarsky (Cinephil), Greek documentarian Marianna Economou, and Michael Stütz, head of Berlinale Panorama, who picked Dragons “for its reflection on power relations in Brazil today, for questioning political elites, economical structures and the power of images through time — we found...
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A host of international filmmakers are now taking part in the leading Greek gathering’s Spaces #3 project. Update (14 May 2020): Spaces #3 is now available on YouTube here, featuring shorts by Yung Chang, Ildikó Enyedi, Annemarie Jacir, Nanouk Leopold, Teona Strugar Mitevska, Victor Moreno and Albert Serra. Update (22 April 2020): Spaces #2 is now available on YouTube here, featuring shorts by Tarik Aktas, Mateo Bendesky, Denis Côté, Rachel Leah Jones, Radu Jude, John C Lynch and Jia Zhang-Ke. Previously, Spaces #1 had been made available here, featuring shorts by Giorgos Georgopoulos, Rinio Dragasaki, Zacharias Mavroeidis, Minos Nikolakakis, Marianna Economou, Stavros Pamballis, Syllas Tzoumerkas and Stavros Psillakis. Update (7 April 2020): The Thessaloniki International Film Festival has extended its call for creativity via its “Species of Spaces” project. While all of the short films created by 11 Greek filmmakers and Hellenic Film Academy Award nominees have already been completed...
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