Nordic artistic light with an apocalyptic end in Thessaloniki

The closing film of this year’s Thessaloniki International Film Festival was the Danish majority production The End.Portraying one of the last surviving families living in a luxurious underground compound 25 years after the planet’s environmental collapse, the English language film stars Tilda Swinton, George MacKay, Moses Ingram and Michael Shannon. The post-apocalyptic musical marks the fiction feature debut of the twice Oscar-nominated documentary director Joshua Oppenheimer.

At the closing ceremony, Oppenheimer remarked that it is evidently fitting to conclude a festival with a film titled The End. He also stated that the film is “a mediation on storytelling”, as was the case with his documentaries The Act of Killing (2012) and The Look of Silence (2014). A mediation on “the way we tell stories to hide from the world, and from ourselves, on how we make up excuses for our behaviours, and we cling to them tightly, to ease our regrets. It’s a film about the singular human ability to lie to ourselves, as well as the devastating consequences of this self-deception», the director said.

The End is produced by Signe Byrge Sørensen for Final Cut for Real, with Oppenheimer and Swinton also producing. Co-producers are Wild Atlantic (Ireland), The Match Factory (Germany), Dorje Film (Italy), Moonspun Films (UK), and Anagram (Sweden).

During the busy, yet pleasantly relaxed 11-day period, the 65th Thessaloniki International Film Festival hosted a tribute to the Danish visual artist Jesper Just, screening 18 of his short film works. Among these were Just’s most recent film Interfears (2023), a visual installation starring Matt Dillon. Interfears explores the emotional landscape of an actor’s brain – Dillon’s, that is – while rehearsing a monologue, using an fMRI scanner to map brain waves into 2D and 3D representations. The American actor was bestowed the festival’s honorary Golden Alexander award, and attended the opening of the Interfears installation together with Just. Dillon was also present at the screening of Jessica Palud‘s new Maria Schneider biopic Being Maria (Maria), in which he portrays Marlon Brando, and his own directional feature debut, City of Ghosts from 2002.

As part of the festival’s Immersive section, the Danish artist and designer Carl Emil Carlsen’s installation Intangible was screened out of competition.

Aiming to create a collaborative pathway between the southern and northern part of Europe, the Thessaloniki fest’s industry section AGORA has introduced a new initiative called Bridge to the North. Under this headline, a selected Nordic or Baltic country will be in focus each year, to explore opportunities for financial and artistic collaboration. This year’s edition shed light on Sweden, with a delegation of the country’s industry professionals attending the AGORA market, in partnership with the Swedish Film Institute, Göteborg Film Festival, the Swedish Institute, and the Embassy of Sweden in Greece.

Returning to the voluminous and strong film programme, a number of Nordic titles were screened in the festival’s various sections. These included the Greek premieres of Norwegian director Thea Hvistendahl’s Handling the Undead (Håndtering av udøde), a co-production between Norway, Sweden, Greece and Denmark, and the Norwegian film Loveable (Elskling) by Lilja Ingolfsdottir, both screened out of competition in the Open Horizon section, and with both directors guesting the festival.

Also present in Thessaloniki was Danish actress Trine Dyrholm, attending with The Girl with the Needle (Pigen med nålen). The Danish/Polish/Swedish feature directed by Swede Magnus von Horn was selected for the festival’s Special Screening section, as was Iceland’s Rúnar Rúnarsson’s When the Light Breaks (Ljósbrot).

Furthermore, the Norwegian animated feature Spermageddon by Tommy Wirkola and Rasmus A. Sivertsen was presented in the Round Midnight screenings, and Icelandic Helena Stefánsdóttir’s Natatorium, co-produced by Denmark and Finland, competed for the Smart7 Award. Among the fest’s Series Special Screenings were Norwegian series Dates in Real Life by Jakob Rørvik and Finland’s Money Shot (Toinen Tuleminen) by Teemu Niukkanen. Also from Norway, Eirik Sæter Stordahl’s Lars is LOL (Lars er LOL) was screened in the children and youth film section Next Gen. The programme also included several Nordic minority productions, such as Greek director Alexandros Avranas’ refugee drama set in Sweden, Quiet Life, as well as Julie Keeps Quiet (Julie zwijgt), which took home two prizes.

When the awards were presented on Sunday November 10, the Best Feature Film Award “Golden Alexander – Theo Angelopoulos” went to Palestinian filmmaker Scandar Copti’s sophomore feature Happy Holidays (Palestine/Germany/France/Italy/Qatar), a family drama set in Haifa, Israel. The top award is accompanied by 10,000 euro.

The festival’s second most prestigious prize, the Best Director Award “Silver Alexander”, was bestowed Belgian helmer Leonardo Van Dijl for the Swedish co-production Julie Keeps Quiet. The accolade also comes with a cash prize of 5,000 euro.

The films in Thessaloniki’s International Competition section are debut or sophomore films by up-and-coming filmmakers. The main competition jury consisted of American filmmaker and producer Sara Driver, Canadian filmmaker Denis Côté and Greek producer Konstantinos Kontovrakis. “This is a powerful, but quiet psychological film. Beautifully constructed, performed and shot,” the jury states in their reasoning for the Best Director prize to Van Dijl for his feature debut.

Among the festival’s many awards and juries, Julie Keeps Quiet also received the Human Values Award of the Hellenic Parliament.

Van Dijl’s #metoo themed drama tells the story of a talented young tennis player who keeps quiet when her coach falls under investigation for inappropriate conduct. Julie Keeps Quiet is produced by Belgian company De Wereldvrede, with the Dardenne brothers’ Les Films du Fleuve as well as Sweden’s Hobab (Nima Yousefi) and Film i Väst (Kristina Börjeson and Anthony Muir) co-producing.

Dates in Real Life, The End, The Girl with the Needle, Handling the Undead and When the Light Breaks have received funding from Nordisk Film & TV Fond.

The 65th Thessaloniki International Film Festival took place from October 31 to November 10.