Tag Archives: The 65th Thessaloniki International Film Festival

RKS 2024 Film: The 65th Thessaloniki International Film Festival: “Wishbone”

Sorry for jumping ahead here. Do you like “happy endings” and by that I don’t mean that term as used in that “Curb Your Enthusiasm” episode with Larry David and his Korean masseuse I watched on my KLM flight from Thessaloniki to Toronto this week. There is no clear-cut ending here. Director Penny Panayotopoulou hasContinue reading “RKS 2024 Film: The 65th Thessaloniki International Film Festival: “Wishbone””

RKS 2024 Film: The 65th Thessaloniki International Film Festival: “Riviera”

Alkisti (Eva Samioti) lives with her mother Anna (Maria Apostlakea) in a house on the Athenian Riviera letting out rooms to Greek and foreign tourists. Failed writer Petros and an elder couple the Hatzivasiliou’s are guests. Alkisti often expresses herself poetically. Alkisti describes the end of the world in literary terms asking her devil toContinue reading “RKS 2024 Film: The 65th Thessaloniki International Film Festival: “Riviera””

RKS 2024 Film: The 65th Thessaloniki International Film Festival: “Fauna”: Corruption Lost in Itself

In a 2024 Greek film director Stratoula Theodoratou delves into moral and political corruption in Greek society. Corruption respects no boundaries, and it may be those attempting to expose corruption are equally corrupt as those they strive to expose. Anna, an Athenian photojournalist, when escaping from a violent demonstration, encounters severely demented Lambros eating aContinue reading “RKS 2024 Film: The 65th Thessaloniki International Film Festival: “Fauna”: Corruption Lost in Itself”

RKS 2024 Film: The 65th Thessaloniki International Film Festival: “Natatorium”: Supressed Evil Takes a Lunge

Eighteen-year-old Lilja visits grandmother Áóra and grandfather Grimur to be proximate to an audition for an international performance group unable to contact her father Magnus about her stay. How sweet, a stay with granny and grandpa! Kalli, the son of Granny and Grandpa, is bedridden in their home seriously ill. Their daughter Val owner ofContinue reading “RKS 2024 Film: The 65th Thessaloniki International Film Festival: “Natatorium”: Supressed Evil Takes a Lunge”

RKS 2024 Film: The 65th Thessaloniki International Film Festival: “The Best of All Worlds”: Portuguese Disaster Movie

In 1775 one of the strongest earthquakes in recorded history measuring 8.5-9 on the Richter scale devastated Lisbon. Its centre was in the ocean some 325 kilometres off the coast of the island of Madeira. A tsunami followed. Seismologists predict another similar powerful earthquake in Portugal and the sole question is when. Consider its powerContinue reading “RKS 2024 Film: The 65th Thessaloniki International Film Festival: “The Best of All Worlds”: Portuguese Disaster Movie”

RKS 2024 Film: The 65th Thessaloniki International Film Festival: “Giannis in the Cities”: Chilling and Legitimate Child Brutality

“Giannis in the Cities” is a wounding and penetrating journey into “Childcare Cities” established during the Greek Civil War as told through a “survivor” author Yannis Atzakas. There are haunting similarities to the establishment of “residential schools” in Canada amounting to little more than kidnapping of Aboriginal children for purposes of assimilation into colonial correctnessContinue reading “RKS 2024 Film: The 65th Thessaloniki International Film Festival: “Giannis in the Cities”: Chilling and Legitimate Child Brutality”

RKS 2024 Film: The 65th Thessaloniki International Film Festival: “Meat”: Twice Out of Control and Twice Dead

Takis (Aky Ilaskarazisis) raises sheep in a small Greek village. Takis has a longstanding feud with Kyriakou (Dimitris Xanthopoulos) over land ownership.  A situation of two hot heads colliding in a violent verbal spar starting the film with Kyriakou without much community support just being released from three years in prison. Community standards run highContinue reading “RKS 2024 Film: The 65th Thessaloniki International Film Festival: “Meat”: Twice Out of Control and Twice Dead”

RKS 2024 Film: The 65th Thessaloniki International Film Festival: “She Loved Blossoms More”

“She Loved Blossoms More” is a film difficult to categorise as to genre and the best I can suggest is “psychedelic horror”. Consider it a combination of “The Wizard of Oz”, the blue pill from “The Matrix”, “Back to the Future”, “Mad Max” and the LSD trip in New Orleans in “Easy Rider”. The plotContinue reading “RKS 2024 Film: The 65th Thessaloniki International Film Festival: “She Loved Blossoms More””

RKS 2024 Film: The 65th Thessaloniki International Film Festival: “Killerwood”

“Killerwood” is yet another Greek film showcasing at The 65th Thessaloniki International Film Festival. It is the third festival film I have watched about a film making a film a seemingly favourite modern Greek film genre. On one level it is intriguing because it focuses on the production of a film including many of itsContinue reading “RKS 2024 Film: The 65th Thessaloniki International Film Festival: “Killerwood””

RKS 2024 Film: The 65th Thessaloniki International Film Festival: “Brando with a Glass Eye”

45 minutes of conventional film making is followed by diffuse and scattered imagery desperately clinging to a wandering plot. Call it boring at that point or be generous and artsy or experimental which loses much of the audience. An audience does not necessarily want to be spoon fed but may wander lost in imagery andContinue reading “RKS 2024 Film: The 65th Thessaloniki International Film Festival: “Brando with a Glass Eye””