The 2023 Greek Film Festival has announced its full program for Sydney with a wide range of contemporary and classic Greek cinema on offer.
Returning to Sydney at the Leichhardt’s Palace Norton Street Cinema from October 19 to 29, more than 20 features films and documentaries will be screened as well as the Student Film Festival.
The opening night feature film is the multi-award winning Behind the Haystacks by Asimina Proedrou, starring Stathis Stamoulakatos, Lena Ouzounidou and Evgenia Lavda.
Taking place during the 2015-16 refugee crisis on the Greece-North Macedonia border, a tragic incident strikes a family of three, pushing them pushing them to face their own personal impasses, while having to deeply consider the price for their actions.
Many special events and films will be screened over the 11 days, including a tribute to the late Irene Pappas, whose career spanned over 70 years. Festival goers will be treated with a screening of one of her most acclaimed films Cannons of Navarone.
This year also marks 80 years since the deportation of the Jews of Thessaloniki, so in collaboration with the Jewish Board of Deputies of NSW, the festival will screen a handful of documentaries and a feature film that commemorate the victims of the Holocaust, especially the Jewish community of Thessaloniki.
For the first time ever, young audiences will have the opportunity to watch a film dedicated for them.
Karagiozis, the shadow puppet of Greek folklore has been translated to animation, in what is the first Greek-produced animated film.
The aforementioned 2015-16 refugee crisis is again the topic for another film at the Greek Film Festival.
Greek-Australian direct Jason Raftopoulos will be in attendance for his new drama Voices in Deep on Saturday October 21.
The film is set in the aftermath of the refugee crisis when nearly one million refugees “crossed” from Turkey to Greece and is filmed in Greece. The screening will be followed by a Q&A.
A special documentary for Sydney cinephiles will be screened, which is about the life of Nelson Mandela’s Greek lawyer George Bizos.
His son Alexis Bizos will be in attendance with the Jane Thandi Lipman, creator of the George Bizos Icon doco, for a Q&A.
The closing night film to conclude the festival will be a Cypriot movie titled IMAN, by Korinna Avraamidou and Kyriakos Tofaridis. The film depicts the complexity of the modern Cypriot society, with the protagonists’ personal fights for survival within a Western-style country that is geographically so close to the turbulent Middle East.
For more information and to buy your tickets visit www.greekfilmfestival.com.au
