The film Dead Europe, adapted from the novel with the same name by Greek Australian author Christos Tsiolkas, will premiere at this year’s Sydney Film Festival.
The festival, which opens on June 6 under new festival director Nashen Moodley, will feature the premiere of Tony Krawitz’s adaptation of Dead Europe – one of the 12 films in official competition
Australian director Tony Krawitz (Jewboy, The Tall Man) adapts Tsiolkas’ award-winning novel in this searing film about history, guilt and secrets.
Ewen Leslie delivers a great performance as photographer Isaac, whose father’s death in suburban Sydney reveals the schism in his family and prompts a return to the ancestral homeland. On a trip to his parent’s village in Greece, he learns something of his father’s cursed history. At first he dismisses the revelation as superstitious nonsense, but over the course of his travels – from Greece to Paris to Budapest – Isaac is forced to confront the anti-Semitism of the past, the embedded bigotry in the bones of Europe and the nature of inherited guilt. It is on this fateful trip that Isaac will learn the truth of his family’s migration to Australia, their refusal to ever return to Greece, and the burden he continues to bear as a consequence of acts committed years before his birth. Krawitz sensitively depicts this clash of mythology and a very contemporary reality in this daring and enigmatic film populated by spirits and outcasts.
Alps by Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos is one of the other titles in the official competition. Greek-Australian writer and animator, Christopher Kezelos has his title The Maker in the Dendy Awards for short films.