International Thessaloniki Film Festival

Thessaloniki is seldom more than a couple of pages in guidebooks, whether for Europe or for Greece. My local acquaintances like this. This city of about a million is a secret they want kept quiet. The International Thessaloniki Film Festival is a gleaming artifact as well. In its 40th year, it remains one of the great secrets of world fests, a kind of Toronto-by-the-sea. An international festival since 1992, focusing on the works of first and second-time filmmakers (the only movies eligible for competition), Thessaloniki is one of the best one-stop surveys of a year’s work in world cinema. Taking in the survey programmed by festival director Michel Demopoulos – and others, including Dimitri Eipides, whose New Horizons program repeats some of the estimable programming he brings to Toronto – one has hope for the future of world cinema outside Hollywood.

Attendance leapt this year with a new ticketing system allowing advance purchases, leading to many sellouts, even on weekdays, and an increase in attendance of almost 40 percent by an overwhelmingly young local audience. The festival’s top nod, The Golden Alexander, worth almost $40,000, went to Zhang Yang’s Shower, a sweet generational tale set in a Chinese bathhouse; it also took the Audience Award for Best Foreign Film (and has U.S. distribution). A special jury award (and $23,000) went to Marco Bechis’ Argentine Garage Olimpo, a desolate look at torture. On a lighter note, Best Director went to Justin Kerrigan for his Miramax-bound rave-up romance, Human Traffic, the film also took the first Europa Cinema Award, which recognizes Euro titles. (10,000 Euros were earmarked for its Greek distribution.)

Other awards included an Artistic Achievement Award that went to Sasa Gedeon’s gentle farce Return of the Idiot; and Ed Radtke’s sturdy U.S. road movie, The Dream Catcher, won notice for work by actor Paddy Connor and cinematographer Terry Stacey. Abbas Kiarostami, a four-time guest of the Fest, was given an honorary Golden Alexander before the first showing of his great, enigmatic The Wind Will Carry Us.

Mini-retrospectives surveyed the work of Ildiko Enyedi, Claire Denis, Lea Pool and Allison Anders. A tribute to Pedro Almodovar was marred only by his absence in the wake of his mother’s death; Marisa Paredes was the Festival’s sweet diva among other guests. Each year’s Greek output and Balkan titles are another regular focus, with a retrospective of Yugoslavian Srdjan Karanovic, whose 1988 A Film With No Name was a cool stunner. Latter-day titles including Djordje Milosavljevic’s black comedy romp, Wheels, which puts a Ten Little Indians plot into a Yugoslavian diner, while Janez Burger’s campus-slacker Idle Running showed a knack for dry understatement. A post-revolution Portuguese salute offered a 15-film look at a little-known national cinema, with a few standouts, such as Joao Botelho’s 1988 Dickens riff Hard Times and Pedro Costa’s delirium-tremendous O Sangue, a romantic swoon reminiscent of Leos Carax.

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