Joshua Oppenheimer is tired. The two-time Academy Award nominee isn’t simply spent at the tail end of an exhausting week for the American body politic. Nor has he tossed and turned his way through countless sleepless nights, doomscrolling through the nightmare scenarios of what a second Trump administration could mean for Americans’ civil rights, the […]

In November 2015, a staggeringly violent crime took place in the impoverished area of Mghila Mountain in Tunisia. A jihadist group attacked two young shepherds, killing one and forcing the survivor to carry a bloody message back to his family. The real-life case inspired Lotfi Achour’s harrowing drama “Red Path,” which played as part of […]

Palestinian filmmaker Scandar Copti’s Israel-set family drama “Happy Holidays” won the top prize Sunday at the Thessaloniki Film Festival, taking home the Golden Alexander for best feature film. Copti’s sophomore feature, his first film since his Oscar-nominated 2009 debut “Ajami,” premiered in the Venice Film Festival’s Horizons sidebar, winning the best screenplay prize. Variety’s Siddhant […]

Five years after his feature debut “All This Victory” took the Grand Prize and the audience award at Venice’s Critics’ Week, Lebanese filmmaker Ahmad Ghossein is gearing up to shoot his next film. The filmmaker’s sophomore effort, “The Side Effects of Trusting Life,” was selected as part of this year’s Thessaloniki Film Festival’s Agora Crossroads […]

Greek officials sought to reassure local and foreign producers this week at the Thessaloniki Film Festival that the country’s 40% cash rebate is still on track, after the announcement last month that the Mediterranean nation was delaying plans to reopen its popular incentive scheme. That decision came after Greece pressed pause on its cash-back program […]

A mystical cave, a nettle pie and an unexpected betrayal spur a romantic adventure between two childhood friends in “Bearcave,” the feature-length debut of co-writers and -directors Stergios Dinopoulos and Krysianna Papadakis. Starring newcomers Xara Kyriazi and Pamela Oikonomaki, the film, which is currently in post-production, won the top prize this week in the Works […]

Greek filmmaker Stergios Dinopoulos’ queer romantic adventure “Bearcave” and Turkish director Ahu Ozturk’s drama “The Hunchback” took the top prizes at the Thessaloniki Film Festival’s industry award ceremony Wednesday night. Dinopoulos’ feature debut, based on a 2023 short film of the same name, won the Authorwave Post-Production Award, the top prize in the Agora’s Works […]

At the Thessaloniki Film Festival as part of the Agora Series workshops, British-American writer, showrunner and executive producer Anna Winger — who created Netflix’s “Unorthodox,” co-created the streamer’s “Transatlantic,” and co-created Prime Video’s “Deutschland 83” — spoke at length about the evolution of the role of the showrunner, the misconceptions around writers’ rooms and the […]

Traveling to Greece for the Thessaloniki Film Festival has not stopped Matt Dillon from voting in the upcoming U.S. election. “I voted before I came because I had to vote,” he told journalists at a press conference. “When I agreed to come to Thessaloniki, I didn’t realize it was going to be in the middle […]

Returning to Greece with the historical drama “The Return” proved an emotional affair for Juliette Binoche, Ralph Fiennes and director-producer Uberto Pasolini. “Meeting this dream, this need inside Uberto and his passion for the story… We were really moved,” said Binoche before bursting into tears alongside her co-star and director at the film’s press conference […]