The 27th Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival, set to take place from 6 March to 16 March 2025, will showcase a diverse selection of 71 Greek documentaries, spanning competition sections and special screenings. This year’s festival not only highlights contemporary Greek documentary filmmaking but also presents a significant historical discovery: the long-lost 1969 film Kastoria by Takis Kanellopoulos, now forming the centerpiece of the tribute program Geography of the Gaze: Off-Plan Greece (1950–2000).
Films in the Platform+ section will be available for online streaming, extending the festival’s reach from March 7 to March 21, 2025. The selection features a diverse thematic range, including personal narratives, historical retrospectives, and explorations of collective memory and cultural identity.
Among the highlights of the International Competition is Bull’s Heart by Eva Stefani, which examines the role of art in shaping human experience through the lens of performance artist Dimitris Papaioannou’s Transverse Orientation. Sculpted Souls by Stavros Psillakis tells the story of Swiss dentist Julien Grivel, who dedicated decades to treating Hansen’s disease patients in Greece.
In the Newcomers Competition, Lo by Thanassis Vassiliou explores personal and collective trauma through a filmmaker’s return to his childhood home in Athens, while Super Paradise by Steve Krikris traces the transformation of Mykonos from an inclusive refuge to an elite playground.
The festival’s Special Screenings include Mysterious Deaths in Ancient Greece: Olympias. Thirst for Power, an investigative historical documentary on the fate of Alexander the Great’s mother, and L’éclairage revient / Waves of Light, which merges music, history, and industrial landscapes in an artistic exploration of Greece’s power plants.
One of the festival’s most notable events is the tribute Geography of the Gaze: Off-Plan Greece (1950–2000), an archival exploration of Greek documentary cinema. The rediscovery of Kastoria, a long-lost work by Takis Kanellopoulos, catacatalysed tribute’s focus on underexplored rural narratives in Greek cinema.
The tribute comprises 19 rare films that provide a nuanced portrait of Greece’s socio-cultural evolution from 1950 to 2000. Among these are Macedonian Wedding (1960) and Thasos (1961), which, alongside Kastoria, form Kanellopoulos’ ‘Macedonian Trilogy.’ The retrospective also features Firewalkers of Greece (1959) by Roussos Koundouros, documenting the mystical firewalking rituals of Northern Greece, and Prespes (1966) by Takis Hatzopoulos, which offers a poetic meditation on national identity and displacement.
An open discussion titled Kastoria: The Rediscovered Land of Takis Kanellopoulos will be held on 8 March at the Pavlos Zannas Theater. This panel will delve into the film’s discovery and its significance within the broader scope of Greek documentary history. Additionally, universal accessibility remains a priority, with select films from the tribute screening with audio descriptions and subtitles for visually and hearing-impaired audiences.
