Dublin Greek Film Festival

Source: greekfilmfestival.ie

The inaugural Dublin Greek Film Festival launches on Thursday the 23rd of April and is set to showcase nine films in three venues over four days.

It kicks off with Dimitris Koutsiabasakos’s heart-warming documentary about a married couple who have driven almost fifty miles a week for the last thirty years providing assistance to small, remote villages. Taking place in the Chester Beatty Library at 6pm, the screening will be followed by a Q&A with the director.

The festival incorporates two short films which each serve as a prelude to feature length screenings.Tickets to the shorts are free of charge but tickets to the subsequent films are priced.

The first coupling of short and feature innovatively tackles the theme of male isolation and its capacity for destruction and/or beauty. Assimina Proedrou’s colourful “Red Hulk” leads .seamlessly into “Boy Eating The Bird’s Food”, Ektoras Lygizos’s second directorial offering in over eight years. The former tackles racial violence and mental anguish while the latter investigates the strength of simplicity when faced with adversity.

The second short/feature pairing, taking place on Saturday in the New Theatre in Temple Bar, sees Spiros Charalambous’s “Anna”, shot in soft black-and-white, building towards the gorgeously grainy colour of 1987 classic “Morning Patrol”, a staple of Greek sci-fi dealing with female isolation and questions of trust and strength. Renowned Greek film scholar Mikela Fotiou will precede with the “Weird Wave of Greek Cinema”.

As well as film screenings, the festival is also punctuated by a traditional Greek dance workshop on Saturday in the Chester Beatty Library. Hosted by Katerini Papathanasiou – a Greek lawyer and dance teacher based in Dublin for the last three years – the booked-out event is set to explore the history of the Greek circle dance.

The festival climaxes with an intense run of three films packed into The New Theatre on Sunday evening.

The curtain-closing screening sees Panos H. Koutras’s 2014 force majeure “Xenia” take to the screen. The film tells the story of two brothers dealing with their mother’s death by setting off cross-country in search of the Albanian father they’ve never met. His fourth feature in a thus-far illustrious career in Greek cinema, the film will undoubtedly offer the perfect ending to what promises to be a fantastic celebration of Greek cinema.