Festival: Dublin Greek Film Festival announces programme

The First Dublin Greek Film Festival will take place from Thursday 23 April to Sunday 26 April at Chester Beatty Library, Filmbase and the New Theatre. The Festival will showcase the latest films by both internationally established Greek directors and emerging filmmakers and it will highlight through the medium of film the cultural links between Ireland and Greece. All films listed below, have had strong presence throughout film festivals all over the world, including the Toronto Film Festival, Berlinale, and Milan Film Festival). Tickets are available online on www.greekfilmfestival.ie.

The Festival will kick off with the screening of the award winning road documentary The Grocer (Audience Award at Thessaloniki Documentary Film Festival in 2013), at Chester Beatty Library on Thursday 23 April. The movie is an attempt to depict and preserve a vanishing way of life in the mountains of Northern Greece. The Director of the film, Mr Dimitris Koutsiabasakos will be present at the screening.

Boy eating the birds food (2012), which tells a story of a 22-year-old boy who lives in Athens during the crisis, is returning to Ireland after it’s Irish debut at Galway Film Fleadh festival in 2013, where it won Best International First Feature. The screening, which takes place at Filmbase on Friday April 24, will be preceded by an introduction to the Weird Wave of Greek Cinema by film scholar Mikela Fotiou.

On Saturday 25 April Dublin Greek Film Festival invites cinema goers to the screening of the movies Morning Patrol and Wild Duck at The New Theatre. Classic Morning Patrol is a 1987 Greek dramatic, postmodern, art film directed by Nikos Nikolaidis (5 times Best Director Award). Wild Duck played at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2013, and tells the story of a bankrupt telecom’s engineer, cleverly meshing the omnipresence of Greece’s current economic climate with age-old moral impasses.

On Saturday afternoon the Dublin Greek Film Festival and Chester Beatty Library invite people of all ages to a free Greek Traditional Dance Workshop facilitated by dancer Katerini Papathanasiou. During a two hour session people will get a chance to learn basic circle dances from all over Greece and their history.

On Sunday April 26 the Festival day will begin with the screening of the Greek-Cypriot production Fish ‘n Chips (2011) at The New Theatre. The movie tells the story of a hard working Cypriot immigrant who decides to leave London for his native Cyprus (Best Actor and Audience Award at Cyprus Film Days,Third Award – EUFF Toronto).

Also on Sunday 26 April festival organisers invite cinema audiences to the screening of The Eternal Return of Antonis Paraskevas about a famous Greek TV anchorman who fakes his own kidnapping in a desperate bid to salvage his ailing career. The movie which is a satire on celebrity and media cynicism in an age of austerity, received the award of Best Work in Progress in Karlovy Vary International Film Festival two years ago.

The Festival will finish with a screening of a Surprise Movie, which will be announced three weeks prior to the Festival.

For more information about the programme visit www.greekfilmfestival.ie or find Dublin Greek Film Festival on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ or YouTube.