Dublin Greek Film Festival returns with award-winning movies – 19-22 October

» John Hedges

An Phoblacht Editor

The Dublin Greek Film Festival aims to showcase Greek culture through a variety of films new to Dublin audiences by supporting the best in independent film-making

THE THIRD Dublin Greek Film Festival takes place from Thursday 19 October to Sunday 22 October at Chester Beatty Library, Filmbase and The Sugar Club.

The festival will be presenting cinematic visions of Greece through features, documentaries and shorts along with few special events.

Founded in 2014, the Dublin Greek Film Festival aims to showcase Greek culture through a variety of films new to Dublin audiences by supporting the best in independent film-making.

The festival is run by voluntary producers Kiki Konstantinidou and Aleksandra Szymbara.

Kiki Konstantinidou said:

“After a successful second edition the festival is back to bring some Greek culture to Ireland’s capital. We want to give people the opportunity to explore a different aspect of modern Greek culture and reality through various forms of art.”

The Dublin Greek Film Festival will kick off with the sold-out screening of the movie Xamou, which takes the audience to the island of Crete through its breath-taking cinematography and its original music at Chester Beatty Library on 19 October.

The Longest Run (2015), an award-winning documentary by Marianna Economou (Prize of the Trade Union, Doc Leipzig), about two under-age refugees in a Greek prison, will open the second day of the Festival on Friday 21 October at 6pm at Filmbase.

● ‘The Longest Run’

Also on Friday, cinema lovers will have the opportunity to see the new movie by the Greek-Cypriot Director Petros Charalambous, Boy on the Bridge (Best Film at 29th European Cinema Panorama 2016). Filmbase at 8pm.

On Saturday 22 October the festival invites people to the free screening of the short documentary True Blue by Haris Raftogiannis and to the award-winning documentary Next Stop: Utopia (Silver Medal at the 35th URTI International Grand Prix for Author’s Documentary) which talks about the closure of a Greek factory and the struggle of the Greek workers to self-manage it. Filmbase at 6 pm.

● ‘Next Stop: Utopia’

Suntan (2016), the award-winning movie by Argiris Papadimitropoulos (Best International Feature Film at Edinburg International Film Festival 2016), will close the third day of the festival. Filmbase at 8pm.

● ‘Suntan’

On Sunday, the Festival will come to an end with the screening of Amerika Square (FIPRESCI Prize and Special Youth Jury Award at Thessaloniki Film Festival, Greece, 2016) by Yiannis Sakarisis. 

The movie is about an unemployed Greek nationalist in Athens that has his world turned upside-down when his apartment building and beloved city park becomes a home for migrants in transit across Europe.

● ‘Amerika Square’

A concert by Kristi Stasinopoulou will follow at 7:30 at the The Sugar Club. Kristi and her long-time collaborator Stathis Kalyviotis have performed in big festivals in the past, including the Montreal International Jazz Festival in Canada, Barbican Launch London and Womex 2002 in Essen, Germany.

Pioneers of reinvented folk, Kristi and Stathis remix traditional demotika songs to reflect their own experiences of urban life in Greece. 

A previous release by the acclaimed duo topped the World Music Chart for five months and they are coming to Ireland for the first time “to shake up the Dublin music scene”.

● Kristi Stasinopoulou and Stathis Kalyviotis

In addition to screenings and the music event, the Dublin Greek Film Festival will host a photographic exhibition by a Dublin-based Greek photographer, Kostantinos Epoimenidis (Wednesday 18 October to Saturday 21 October at Filmbase).

“My intent in this work is to express the beauty, diversity and mystery of the land and sea of Greece while creating contemplative and meditative open-ended images, that trigger our collective memory and ignite new perspectives on nature and ourselves beyond the known,” says Epoimenidis about the exhibition.

For more information about the programme visit the festival website or find Dublin Greek Film Festival on Facebook, Twitter or Google +