The International Competition presents in Greek premiere ten feature films, shortly after their participation and distinction in major international film festivals. Challenging cinematic conventions, these films highlight themes of political struggles, collective memory, identity and existential search.
Expressing apprehension about the climate crisis and contemporary capitalism, the films Direct Action, by Ben Russell and Guillaume Cailleau, and The Falling Sky, by Eryk Rocha and Gabriela Carneiro da Cunha, depict portraits of two communities, focusing, respectively, on the daily lives of political activists in France, and on the dreamlike ritual of the indigenous Yanomami people of Brazil, which aims to protect them from foreign invaders.
The preservation of identity is central to Kamal Aljafari’s A Fidai Film, which attempts to restore the historical memory of the Palestinian people through the preservation of significant archival material. With hypnotic eroticism, Vietnamese director Truong Minh Quy’s Viet and Nam, fictionally excavates the memories and legacy of a nation. In Marta Mateus’s Fire of Wind, through myths and oral traditions, the traces of history are revealed in the collective unconscious of a community of vineyard workers in Portugal.
In the inventive Υou Burn Me, Matías Piñeiro explores myths and their fragmentary representation, bringing to life the poet Sappho and the nymph Britomartis as they seek to grasp the bittersweet nature of desire. The search for desire and identity permeates the nostalgic wanderings of the heroines of the film bluish, by Lilith Kraxner and Milena Czernovsky, while Heinz Emigholz in The Suit, reflects humorously on the paradox of human existence.
Shifting our gaze from a purely anthropocentric perspective, Nelson Carlos De Los Santos Arias’s Pepe gives voice to a hippopotamus who tells the surreal story of his transport and killing in the Americas. On the other hand, Jessica Sarah Rinland’s Collective Monologue sensitively explores the bonds that are fostered between humans and animals, questioning the imaginary boundaries separating species.
Film Selection: Maria Komninos, Nepheli Gambade, Jacob Skenderidis
Texts: Maria Komninos, Nepheli Gambade
