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The 67th Thessaloniki International Film Festival is upon us, bringing together major international filmmakers, award-winning productions, emerging cinematic voices and loving odes to Greek cinema. 

Among the highlights are new films by Andrey Zvyagintsev, Mike Leigh, Hirokazu Kore-eda, Nanni Moretti and Fatih Akin, alongside a special tribute to Greek director Nikos Grammatikos and an extensive program of international competition entries.

The festival will also honor composer Stavros Xarchakos and director Nikos Grammatikos with honorary Golden Alexanders, adding a distinctly Greek dimension to this year’s program.

Opening film: modern oligarchy

The festival will open with Minotaur, the latest film by Russian director Andrey Zvyagintsev, known for Leviathan and Loveless.

Set against the backdrop of Russia in 2022 and its invasion of Ukraine, the film follows an oligarch who must select 14 employees to be sent to war while discovering that his wife has been unfaithful.

Drawing on the myth of the Minotaur, Zvyagintsev explores power, family relationships and moral choices, relocating the story of Claude Chabrol’s The Unfaithful Wife to Putin’s Russia. The director, who has received recognition twice at the Cannes Film Festival, returns to themes that have shaped much of his work.

The closing film, Woman Unknown by Danish director May el-Toukhy, takes audiences to Denmark in the aftermath of the Second World War. Its central character, a woman preparing to marry her wealthy employer, must confront her past and the consequences of her association with the Nazis.

The historical drama examines the treatment of women linked to the Nazi regime following liberation, raising questions about guilt, public condemnation and the possibility of starting over. Lead actress Mathilde Arcel received the Volpi Cup for Best Actress at the recent Venice Film Festival.

New films from acclaimed international directors

Several of the festival’s most anticipated screenings come from established filmmakers whose work has gone global.

British director Mike Leigh (best known for his film Secrets and Lies) returns with Tender Loving Care, a comedy about two social workers in west London who bond through the challenges of their profession. Exploring friendship, care, family relationships and the passage of time, the film won the Golden Shell at the San Sebastian Film Festival.

The director has suggested that this could be his final film, giving the screening additional significance.

Italian director Nanni Moretti brings It Will Happen Tonight to TiFF, a story of a great forbidden love that combines emotion, surrealism and humor. Known for films including Caro Diario, The Son’s Room and We Have a Pope, Moretti once again explores personal relationships and the contradictions of contemporary society.

German-Turkish filmmaker Fatih Akin will also return to Thessaloniki to present Our Last Song. His work, which includes Head-On, The Edge of Heaven, Soul Kitchen and In the Fade, frequently explores family, migration, music and identity.

Festival award-winners come to SKG

The program also features films arriving in Thessaloniki with significant accolades.

Belgian director Lukas Dhont, known for Girl and Close, presents The Brave. The film tells the little-known story of soldiers during the First World War who transformed themselves into women on stage. Its two lead actors received acting awards at Cannes, making it one of the notable entries in this year’s selection.

Spanish filmmakers Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi, collectively known as Los Javis, bring Black Ball, inspired by an unfinished work by Federico García Lorca.

The film, which follows the directors’ recognition at Cannes, has also been selected as Spain’s Oscar submission and represents one of Netflix’s major awards-season prospects. Its cast includes Penélope Cruz, Glenn Close and Miguel Bernardeau.

Greek cinema takes center stage

Greek cinema will receive particular attention through two significant screenings connected to this year’s honorary awards.

Nikos Grammatikos’s Absent (1996) returns to the big screen 30 years after its release. The film follows six friends who repeatedly reunite on their ancestral island over seven years, as they grow older, fall in love, make personal choices and gradually drift apart.

Featuring Vangelis Mourikis, Tasos Nousias, Emilios Chilakis, Nikos Georgakis and Giorgos Evgenikos, among others, the film won several awards at the 1996 Thessaloniki Film Festival, including Best Film, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Supporting Actor, the Critics’ Award and the Audience Award.

Its return coincides with the presentation of an honorary Golden Alexander to Grammatikos. The festival will also dedicate a retrospective to his filmography and host the first presentation of Absent: An Oral History, a book by Theodosis Michos featuring testimonies from the film’s contributors.

Another major Greek screening will be Rembetiko (1983), directed by Costas Ferris. Based on elements of the life of singer Marika Ninou, the film traces the story of a popular Greek singer, Marika, from the Asia Minor Catastrophe to post-war Greece.

Starring Sotiria Leonardou, with music by Stavros Xarchakos, the film explores the history of rebetiko music through a story of love, loss, poverty and personal struggles. It enjoyed considerable success, won awards at the Thessaloniki Film Festival and received the Silver Bear at the 1984 Berlin International Film Festival.

Its screening this year coincides with an honorary Golden Alexander for Xarchakos, 43 years after the film’s original release.

Emerging talent and competition highlights

Beyond established directors, the festival’s competition sections offer opportunities to discover new filmmakers and distinctive cinematic approaches.

The international competition’s Arrivals section includes The Place Is Full of Beasts, by Sarah Arnold. Set in Corsica, the film combines comedy, crime mystery and romance in an unconventional story.

Another entry, The Incomer by Louis Paxton, follows an awkward civil servant sent to a remote Scottish island to evict two siblings from their home. His assignment proves considerably more complicated than expected, as the film explores the clash between bureaucracy and local communities.

Les Indes, directed by Pauline Juillet and Nicolas Chapoulier, transports audiences to 17th-century Europe. It follows a young Spanish nobleman tasked with delivering a portrait of the Spanish Infanta to the young Louis XIV, opening a window onto royal courts, dynastic relationships and the political significance of royal marriages.

The Film Forward section offers a different range of perspectives. Rob Rice’s Ponderosa is a dark political comedy about the rise of the far right in the United States, while Rafael Manuel’s Filipiniana explores colonial violence and social inequality through the seemingly idyllic setting of a golf club in the Philippines.

I Plant My Hand in the Garden, by Boris Hatzija and Hoda Taheri, follows an Iranian lesbian refugee and a gay Serbian artist living in Berlin. When the woman’s family arrives from Iran, the two friends pretend to be a couple, prompting an exploration of family expectations, sexual identity and the challenges faced by people seeking greater freedom abroad.

The Meet the Neighbors+ section also offers several distinctive stories. Where Giants Sleep connects contemporary life with the mythology of neighboring regions and will have its world premiere in Thessaloniki.

Flesh and Gasoline tells the story of two truck drivers who unexpectedly fall in love, while Palestinian director Abdallah Al-Khatib’s Chronicle of a Siege examines the everyday experiences of people trying to survive under siege, searching for moments of humanity and hope amid war.

Special screenings and unusual cinematic encounters

The festival will also host screenings that go beyond conventional narratives.

One of the most significant is Riddles of the Sphinx (1977), by Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen, a landmark of British feminist experimental cinema. Through the everyday life of a woman raising her child, the film examines motherhood, work and women’s experiences.

Its distinctive use of long, circular camera movements challenges conventional cinematic storytelling. The screening will be particularly notable because Mulvey, one of the most influential film theorists, will attend the festival in Thessaloniki.

Another major event will centre on DAU, the ambitious cinematic project by Russian director Ilya Khrzhanovsky, who will also be present.

Initially conceived as a film biography of Soviet physicist Lev Landau, DAU evolved into a large-scale artistic experiment lasting several years. The production created an entire Soviet research institute setting in Ukraine, where hundreds of participants lived and interacted in front of cameras under conditions designed to recreate the Stalinist era.

The material generated several films, including DAU. Natasha, which competed at the 2020 Berlin International Film Festival. The project also involved conductor Teodor Currentzis, who portrayed Landau, and actress Maria Nafpliotou.

The project has attracted considerable discussion, both for its unconventional filmmaking methods and for the conditions under which it was created.

Dates, tickets and online screenings

The 67th Thessaloniki International Film Festival will take place from November 5 to 15, 2026. 

A total of 58 films will also be available online through the festival’s digital platform, offering audiences an opportunity to watch selected productions remotely.

The full screening schedule, venue information and ticket details are available on the festival’s official website, filmfestival.gr, while online screenings can be accessed through online.filmfestival.gr.