The Thessaloniki International Film Festival is the top film festival of South Eastern Europe, the presentation platform for the year’s Greek productions, and the primary and oldest festival in the Balkans for the creations of emerging film makers from all over the world.
The 56th edition, running from November 6-15, 2015, includes various sections and special screenings. In the Balkan Survey section, well-known directors, as well as promising newcomers in their exceptional debuts, the majority of which are women, tackle a variety of challenging social themes. Balkan Survey also celebrates the work of Romanian auteur Mircea Daneliuc, one of the most important and influential filmmakers, whose work in Romania during the 80s and post-communism era remains largely unacknowledged outside his country. Daneliuc will be in Thessaloniki to introduce his films to the Festival’s audience.
The Open Horizons section includes a variety of films, directed by filmmakers who have already established themselves in the independent film scene, as well as promising newcomers. Isabelle Huppert, Gabriel Byrne, Jesse Eisenberg and David Strathairn star in Louder Than Bombs by Joachim Trier (Oslo, August 31st), who skillfully dissects a dysfunctional American family whose estranged male members reunite after their wife/mother’s death. Another English-language debut, Chronic by Michel Franco provides an in-depth and intense study on mortality and grief, featuring as central character a dedicated nurse, remarkably played by Tim Roth, who works with terminally ill patients. The 25-year odyssey of Eva Peron’s embalmed body inspires Pablo Aguero’s Eva Doesn’t Sleep, a three-segment film with experimental hues that moves between dream and reality, featuring Gael Garcia Bernal and Denis Lavant in the main roles.
Some of this year’s most anticipated films will be screened as part of the Special Screenings section. In his latest work Francofonia, Aleksandr Sokurov pays a virtuosic homage to the Louvre Museum, through the story of two remarkable men, Louvre director Jacques Jaujard and Nazi Occupation officer Count Franziskus Wolff-Metternich, who cooperated in protecting Louvre’s art collections during World War II. The same period becomes the setting for newcomer’s László Nemes exceptional debut Son of Saul (Grand Prize of the Jury, FIPRESCI Prize, Cannes Film Festival), whose main character, a Jewish prisoner forced to assist the Nazis in exterminating camp inmates, reflects the unspeakable horror of the Holocaust.
Finally, for the fourth consecutive year, the audience of the 56th Thessaloniki International Film Festival will have the opportunity to watch the three films of the Official Competition of the 2015 LUX Prize, bestowed annually by the European Parliament. The films are: Mediterranea by Jonas Carpignano (Italy, France, USA, Germany, Qatar), Mustang by Deniz Gamze Ergüven (France, Germany, Turkey) and The Lesson by Kristina Grozeva & Petar Valchanov (Bulgaria, Greece).
More info can be found at the 56th Thessaloniki International Film Festival website.
