It’s that time of the year. Premiere Nights 2022!
Our 10 film recommendations for surviving the Athenian long-awaited festival
After having spent two years between online platforms and open-air halls, the Athens International Film Festival returns to the city's cinematic theatres with dynamic, coherent content that has something for everyone. One of the most important and prestigious film festivals in Greece, the AIFF shines a light on lesser-known genres of independent cinema, introducing audiences to some of the best year's productions and establishing itself as the ideal opening of the upcoming movie season.
We handpicked 10 of our favourite films, so you don't have to!
Source: www.aiff.gr
DECISION TO LEAVE (Opening Film) / Park Chan-wook / Festival Darlings
At the peak of his powers, full of wit and melancholy, Park Chan-wook, the director of ‘Oldboy’ and ‘The Handmaiden’ - and this year’s Best Director winner at Cannes-, creates the platonic ideal of the ‘New-RomanticNeo-Noir’(sic), elaborate noir thriller. A detective investigating a man's death in the mountains falls crazy in love with the dead man's mysterious wife in the course of his dogged sleuthing, in a labyrinth-like plot.
FALCON LAKE / Charlotte Le Bon / International Competition
The first pangs of love, an ingenious ghost story, or perhaps both? Canadian actress Charlotte Le Bon's exceptionally assured first directorial film is full of light mischief yet unprecedented and terrifying, sensitively capturing the agonies of adolescence. During the hot summertime at a lake cabin in Quebec the 13-year-old Bastien becomes enamored with Chloé, the slightly older daughter of a family friend, whose worldly reputation and sharp intelligence belie her own innocence and lack of experience.
TRAMPS / Kevin Hegge / Special Screenings
On the other side of punk nihilism of late ‘70s Britain, there were the Blitz Kids. The 4G of an era (Grand, Glamorous, Glittery and Gay – though everyone was welcome as long as they indulged in their style), the crazy child of Bowie and Roxy Music, it served as the undercoat of the New Romantics, that dominated pop music in the early ‘80s. Kevin Hegge's feature length documentary explores the substance behind the style on the streets of East London, England.
THE MOTHER AND THE WHORE / Tribute to Jeun Eustache
An emotionally shattering, historically earthshaking film by Jean Eustache, one of the crucial sons of the New Wave. According to Cahiers du Cinema, the ‘best film of the ‘70s’, the scandalous (and twice awarded) presence at Cannes. The chauvinist Alexandre balances relationships with several women, including the maternal Marie and the sexually liberated Veronika, in the post-1968 intellectual scene of Paris. At the center -likeable and laughable at once- Jean-Pierre Leaud, the ultimate male face of nouvelle vague.
STORY OF MY WIFE / Ildikó Enyedi / Festival Darlings
In a Parisian cafe in the beginning of the 20th century, a seaman makes a bet his friend will marry the first woman to come through the door. Lucky for him, the woman, and his future wife, is the dazzling Lizzie. Unluckily for both, this risky marriage, starting with a cute folly, soon turns into an emotionally painful descent into jealousy, uncertainty and paranoia. Working on an epic narrative canvas, the Oscar nominated director of praised ‘On Body and Soul’ adapts with exquisite taste and Hollywood ambition a magnificent novel about doomed love. In the starring role, a Lea Seydoux of porcelain beauty.
BLIND WILLOW, SLEEPING WOMAN / Pierre Földes / Festival Darlings
A lost cat, a voluble giant toad and a tsunami help an unambitious salesman, his frustrated wife and a schizophrenic accountant save Tokyo from an earthquake and find meaning in their lives. Balancing between the absurd, the surreal and existentialism, and masterfully recreating the mystical atmosphere with the metaphysical concerns of Haruki Murakami, the film constitutes a sui generis, a hypnotic creation that orchestrates a fanciful audiovisual tsunami as it chronicles the trials and tribulations of a handful of lost souls trying to reinvent themselves.
THE FRENCH CONNECTION / William Friedkin / New Hollywood
William Friedkin’s gritty 1970s classic is the paradigmatic rip-roaring chase film, complete with New York City street and subway pursuits, drug smugglers, corrupt cops, and one good guy, Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle – based on true-life detective Eddie Egan – who makes his own rules. By introducing a more realistic and original context, the film renewed the genre of crime, won 5 Oscar awards and gave cinema one of the most breathtaking car-chase scenes ever made.
IN THE COURT OF THE CRIMSON KING / Toby Amies / Music & Film
Toby Amies’ documentary takes us on a journey to one of the most eccentric and psychedelic places rock music has ever reached: to the court of the, perhaps, fallen yet bold and genius “Crimson King”, who is none other than the dynastic leader of King Crimson, Robert Fripp. Amies has admitted he wanted to make a typical biographical documentary but the backstage madness and paranoia have led him to an unexpected and certainly more exciting direction. For the 50-year anniversary of the Crimson King is an intimate and spiritual celebration for those who gave everything in the pursuit of perfection.
ALL THE BEAUTY AND THE BLOODSHED / Laura Poitras / International Documentaries Competition - Stranger Than Fiction
The much-discussed Golden Lion winner at this year’s Venice Film Festival, chronicles the tumultuous life and work of the great photographer, Nan Goldin, including her protests against the Sackler family and their company Purdue Pharma, responsible for the OxyContin opioid epidemic's unfathomable death toll. One of the best films of the year.
THE BANSHEES OF INISHERIN / Martin McDonagh / Festival Darlings
Spring, 1923, a remote island in Ireland. A pair of lifelong friends find themselves at an awkward time in their relationship when one of them no longer wants to be friends. The director of “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri '' reunites the exquisite leading duo from “In Bruges”, having Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, in their unique way. One of the best films of the year: a tragicomedy filled with black humour, sardonic dialogues and unexpected emotion about the boundaries of freedom and free will, the weight of our responsibility towards others and the dark ironies of the human condition.
