Athens’ 36th Panorama of European Cinema will be held from November 30 to December 6 and this year’s guests of honor include renowned Serbian Director Emir Kusturica and screenwriter Paul Laverty, who is best known for his works made into films by British Director Ken Loach.

Started in 1988, the Panorama showcases European cinema, including both contemporary and older Greek cinema, but also gems of world cinema, and has welcomed a host of distinguished national and international artists to Athens since it began.

This year, the festival will  kick off with the Greek premiere of Loach’s The Old Oak at the Elli cinema, which was written by Laverty, while Athenian cinephiles will be able to enjoy all Kusturica’s masterpieces alongside the director in a pre-festival retrospective.

In anticipation of the visit by the pre-eminent Serbian director, a pre-festival retrospective of his work will be hosted at the STUDIO New Star Art Cinema on Nov 23, with the program starting with Kusturica’s most emblematic movie The time of the Gypsies. The pre-festival retrospective will continue until Nov 26 with screenings of Kusturica’s complete œuvre along with a Masterclass.

The official premiere of The Old Oak will be honored with the presence of Paul Laverty, who will treat the Athenian audience to a Masterclass at noon the same day at the Astor cinema.

The Old Oak, which Loach said will be his last film in a Guardian interview, unfolds around the last remaining pub in a village in the North East of England. While most of the locals have left the village after the closure of the coal mines that once employed them, Syrian refugees are being housed in the village, while at the same time companies are buying up empty properties for next to nothing.

In addition to its established International Competition Section, film premieres, Special Screenings, shorts by students from New York College, Horme Pictures and the Stavrakos Film School, this year’s Panorama will also include homages to Agnès Varda, Georges Franju, Lindsay Anderson, Dimitris Makris and Olympia Mytilinaiou.