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Agora, the industry section of the Thessaloniki Film Festival, has revealed the selection for its Works in Progress section. Nine films from 15 countries in Southeastern Europe and the Mediterranean region will be showcased in the program, which runs Nov. 3-7.

The section focuses on films in the post-production stage that have a connection to the Mediterranean region and Southeastern Europe. These projects are presented to key players in the industry, including sales agents, distributors, producers, streaming platforms and festival programmers. The aim is to help these films secure finishing funds, attract sales agents, schedule festival premieres, and establish crucial partnerships.

This year’s lineup includes four debut films and five works from seasoned directors.

The Agora Works in Progress Awards include the Authorwave Post-Production Award, with creative image post services as the prize; 119 Marvila Studios Award, with sound mixing services for the winner; the Onassis Film Award, with €10,000 going to...

With a second lockdown looming amid a spike in coronavirus cases across Greece, Giorgos Karnavas, of production outfit Heretic, knew it was a race against time to wrap shooting on “Triangle of Sadness,” a satire directed by Oscar nominee and Palme d’Or winner Ruben Östlund.

Production on the Woody Harrelson-starring feature was postponed for three months earlier this year due to Covid-19, and principal photography was underway on the island of Evia and on a yacht in the Ionian sea when bars, restaurants, cinemas, and non-essential stores across this Mediterranean nation were shuttered on Nov. 7 for at least three weeks. (Harrelson, who has already filmed his scenes in Sweden, did not travel to Greece.)

The production team nevertheless received a special permit from the government to continue the shoot, which wraps Nov. 13. “We had the support of multiple Greek authorities during the whole way through,” said Karnavas, who...

Giorgos Georgopoulos’s Not To Be Unpleasant But We Need To Have A Serious Talk won the top prize.

Greek director Giorgos Georgopoulos’s Not To Be Unpleasant But We Need To Have A Serious Talk won the ’film of the festival’ prize at the UK’s Raindance Film Festival, held online this year from October 28 to November 7.

A dark comedy about a womaniser who contracts a sexually-transmited disease that could be fatal to his many partners, Greece’s Not To Be Unpleasant previously picked up the J.F.Costopoulos Foundation award at the 2019 Thessaloniki film festival.

The other winners...

A host of international filmmakers are now taking part in the leading Greek gathering’s Spaces #3 project. Update (14 May 2020): Spaces #3 is now available on YouTube here, featuring shorts by Yung Chang, Ildikó Enyedi, Annemarie Jacir, Nanouk Leopold, Teona Strugar Mitevska, Victor Moreno and Albert Serra. Update (22 April 2020): Spaces #2 is now available on YouTube here, featuring shorts by Tarik Aktas, Mateo Bendesky, Denis Côté, Rachel Leah Jones, Radu Jude, John C Lynch and Jia Zhang-Ke. Previously, Spaces #1 had been made available here, featuring shorts by Giorgos Georgopoulos, Rinio Dragasaki, Zacharias Mavroeidis, Minos Nikolakakis, Marianna Economou, Stavros Pamballis, Syllas Tzoumerkas and Stavros Psillakis. Update (7 April 2020): The Thessaloniki International Film Festival has extended its call for creativity via its “Species of Spaces” project. While all of the short films created by 11 Greek filmmakers and Hellenic Film Academy Award nominees have already been completed...

Exclusive: Second edition of event hosted with Greece’s Faliro House will support filmmakers from the region.

The participants for the second edition of the Faliro House Sundance Institute Mediterranean Screenwriters Workshop have been revealed.

The workshop, a collaboration between the Sundance Institute and Christos V Konstantakopoulos’ Greek production company Faliro House, supports emerging filmmakers from Greece, Spain, Italy, Portugal and Cyprus (last year’s event is pictured above).

The five-day workshop, held in Costa Navarino, Greece from July 3-9, gives eight filmmakers the chance to work on their feature film scripts with advisors.

The advisors include filmmaker Gyula Gazdag, artistic director for the Sundance Institute in the Us, Lisa Cholodenko (Olive Kitteridge, The Kids Are Alright), Julie Delpy (Before Midnight, 2 Days In Paris), Jeff Nichols (Loving, Take Shelter), recent Palme d’Or winner Ruben Östlund (The Square, Force Majeure), Ira Sachs (Little Men, Love Is Strange), Zach Sklar (JFK), Eva Stefani (Bathers, Acropolis) and Athina Rachel Tsangari...

The 17th edition of the International Film Festival of Kerala (Iffk) has announced its lineup. The festival will run from 7th to 14th December, 2012 in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala.

Some of the highlights of the lineup are festival favourites of the year Amour, Chitrangada, Samhita, The Sapphires, Drapchi, Miss Lovely, Me and You, Celluloid Man, and Baandhon.

Fourteen films will screen in the Competition section while seven contemporary films will be screened in “Indian Cinema Now” section.

Complete list of films:

Competition Films

Fourteen feature films from Asia, Africa and Latin America will compete for the coveted “Suvarna Chakoram” (Golden Crow Pheasant) and other awards.

Always Brando by Ridha Behi (Tunisia)

Inheritors of the Earth by T V Chandran (India)

A Terminal Trust by by Masayuki Suo (Japan)

Shutter by Joy Mathew (India)

Today by Alain Gomis (Senegal-France)

The Repentant by Merzak Allouache (Algeria)

Sta. Niña by Manny Palo (Philippines)

Present Tense...

A day in Athens. The power is constantly going off due to a strike. A ticket inspector buried in debt tries to keep his family together; a couple is one step away from break-up and two teens are travelling through the city with a revolver (a family heirloom). These are the three stories that make up and interconnect in Giorgos Georgopoulos’ first full length feature Tungsten.

Shot in black and white and dealing with “exclusion, violence, psychological cannibalism and consecutive power failures that portray a society on the edge,” Georgopoulos’ film looks like a gorgeously bleak affair where actions shape the individual and victims and villains switch roles.

At first I thought the title referred to the look of the film but a little reading has revealed that tungsten is a metal with the highest melting point and tensile strength which suggests to me that this may well be a...