Cinema in Athens is never more beautiful, more collective, cosier, fresher, or more pioneering than in autumn—when the first rains fall, jackets come out, and the city takes on its autumnal palette. It’s the time when cinephiles gather in theatres for the Athens International Film Festival (AIFF), better known as Nychtes Premieras (Premiere Nights).
AIFF, the city’s biggest film institution, “marks the start of every autumn season and remains a point of reference for the film community and the public,” in the words of Festival General Director Tatiana Pappa.
This year, however, AIFF faces unprecedented financial challenges. With its state funding cut to just one-third of its usual budget, the festival launched ticket presales under the motto “These Nights Remain.” Pappa described the cuts as a stark reminder of “the fragile position of culture in the priorities of the State,” adding: “Cinema, as the ultimate collective art, is both mirror and compass: it helps us understand the world, share experiences, and envision the future.”
Even with reduced support from the Ministry of Culture, the festival proudly presents major guests: three-time Oscar-winning actor Daniel Day-Lewis and Oscar-winning director Neil Jordan.
This year, not all sections return, but the festival preserves its core ones: the International Competition (with 20 fiction features), the International Documentary Competition, Premiere Nights (first-run films), Special Screenings, and Short Films.
Once again, the cinephile audience of Athens will have the chance to enjoy national premieres, meet new creators, discover contemporary trends, experience works of high artistic value, and contribute to film education as well as the promotion of Greek cinema.
Now in its 31st edition, the festival continues to support the value of collective viewing and the outward-looking spirit of cinema. It will run from October 1–12, hosted at its emblematic venues and beloved city theaters — Cinobo Opera, Astor, Asty, and Danaos.
Before we meet in the movie theaters, here’s a short guide with this year’s highlights.
Special Guests
This year’s edition welcomes two distinguished guests. The first is Oscar-winning filmmaker Neil Jordan, who will be honored for his body of work with the support of the Embassy of Ireland. The tribute will be held at the Olympia Theater with a screening of his 1999 film The End of the Affair.
On October 10 at 18:00, the Athens International Film Festival (AIFF) will offer a heartfelt thank you to the Irish director, celebrated for films such as The Company of Wolves, Mona Lisa, The Crying Game, and The End of the Affair, which will follow the award presentation. Adapted from Graham Greene’s novel of the same name, Jordan’s moving drama transports us to wartime London to tell the story of an unforgettable love triangle, seemingly “cursed” by divine will.
The second guest is three-time Oscar-winning actor Daniel Day-Lewis, one of the greatest performers of his generation. one of the greatest actors of his generation. After an eight-year absence from the screen, he makes a surprising return in his son Ronan Day-Lewis’ debut feature, Anemone.
Father and son will both attend the Athens premiere in support of the Cerebral Palsy Greece / Open Door, an organization with which Day-Lewis has maintained close ties since the early days of his career. All proceeds from the screening will go to the society’s initiatives.
The Greek premiere of Anemone, attended by Daniel and Ronan Day-Lewis, will take place on Sunday, October 12, 2025, at 19:00 at the Megaron Athens Concert Hall. It will be a rare opportunity not only to see the actor in a new role but also to hear from him in person.
Opening Film: Lanthimos’ Bugonia
With respect for its history and an eye toward the future, the 31st AIFF opens with one of the year’s most anticipated releases: Yorgos Lanthimos’ Bugonia, starring the incomparable Emma Stone.
Emma Stone stars in Lathimos latest sci-fi comedy, “Bugonia” as the CEO of a major pharmaceutical company that’s been kidnaped.
Among Lanthimos’ most dazzling and sharply directed works, Bugonia reflects on a planet numbed by disinformation, apocalyptic obsession, and a collective paranoia sharpened further by the arrival of COVID. Balancing comedy and drama, it begins with the kidnapping of a powerful pharmaceutical CEO by two men so steeped in conspiracy theories that they believe her to be an alien bent on humanity’s destruction. Starting from this biting premise about the dangers of truth’s distortion in today’s world, Lanthimos drives the narrative toward a delirious finale, asking with sardonic humor a question cinema has posed many times before: Does humanity truly deserve to be saved?
Tickets for this screening are already sold out.
Closing Film: The Year’s Most Moving Romance
The festival curtain will fall with the year’s most anticipated and moving romance, “The History of Sound”,starring audience favorites Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor. Festivalgoers will be among the first to see the film months ahead of its Greek theatrical release.
Set in 1917, the film follows two music students who meet one night in Boston, fall almost instantly in love, and embark on an exploratory journey deep into rural America. Their mission: to collect and record songs from local voices, preserving them as part of an oral tradition they believe must not be lost.
What begins as an intimate conspiracy between them becomes the force that pushes them to defy their realities and, ultimately, the defining shared experience that leaves indelible marks on their lives. Deeply romantic at its core, The History of Sound is a film about first loves — those that prove most impossible to surpass, that defy time, and that one is destined to carry within until the end.
Tickets for this screening are already sold out.
Highlights
Greek Short Stories
Supported by the Hellenic Film Center (EKK), EKKOMED (the Hellenic Film an Audiovisual Center), and main sponsor Nova, AIFF proudly continues to champion Greek cinema with youthful energy and outward-looking spirit. Since its inception, the festival has embraced and elevated local filmmaking with initiatives that deepen a relationship of enthusiastic engagement, protection, and genuine love.
In its 31st edition, the Greek Short Stories competition remains a cornerstone, with 51 films selected from a record 423 submissions vying for the section’s awards.
To see all featuring films please go here.
“The Voice of Hind Rajab” echoes in Athens at its Greek premiere
Winner of the Silver Lion – Grand Jury Prize at the 82nd Venice International Film Festival, Kaouther Ben Hania’s docudrama The Voice of Hind Rajab will have its Greek premiere at AIFF on Sunday, October 5, at 21:30, at Cinobo Opera 1, introduced by representatives of Filmmakers for Palestine Greece.
On January 29, 2024, Red Crescent volunteers received an emergency call: a six-year-old girl trapped in a car under fire in Gaza, pleading for rescue. Her name was Hind Rajab. The volunteers tried desperately to keep her on the line while sending an ambulance, but help never reached her.
In her director’s statement, Ben Hania explains: “At the heart of this film is something very simple, and very hard to live with. I cannot accept a world where a child calls for help and no one comes. That pain, that failure, belongs to all of us. This story is not just about Gaza. It speaks to a universal grief. And I believe that fiction — especially when drawn from verified, painful, real events — is cinema’s most powerful tool. More powerful than breaking news, more powerful than scrolling forgetfulness. Cinema can preserve a memory. Cinema can resist amnesia. May Hind Rajab’s voice be heard.”
Linklater Tells American Stories
“Richard Linklater does something Hollywood has forgotten: he tells American stories, reimagines eras, and captivates by aiming every shot at the viewer’s imagination,” note the festival organizers.
The acclaimed American director — included in the TIME 100 list of the world’s most influential people — returned in 2025 with two new films, both screening at AIFF.
The first, Blue Moon, takes us to Broadway in 1943, chronicling lyricist Lorenz Hart’s struggles with alcoholism and mental health during the opening of Oklahoma!. The role of Richard Rodgers earned Andrew Scott the Silver Bear for Best Supporting Performance.
Set two decades later, Linklater’s Nouvelle Vague offers a playful, feel-good take on the legendary birth of Breathless, the film that in 1960 shook cinema to its core and introduced the uncompromising genius of Jean-Luc Godard. After writing for Cahiers du cinéma, a young Godard decides filmmaking is the best form of criticism, and together with François Truffaut crafts the treatment for a low-budget gangster tale that would change cinema forever.
Dreams (Sex Love) — Berlin Golden Bear Winner
The second installment of the trilogy Sex Dreams Love, Norwegian novelist and director *Dag Johan Haugerud’s Dreams earned the Golden Bear at the 75th Berlin International Film Festival.
In the words of Theodoros Karamanolis, AIFF’s Head of Programming: “This film is a milestone in contemporary urban cinema, redefining how the medium reflects the complexity of human relationships.”
The story follows Joan, a young woman from a literary family who falls in love for the first time — with one of her teachers. Confused by her feelings, she pours them into a diary. When her grandmother and mother discover it, they are first shocked, then determined to convince her to publish her writings. “Defying the harshness of classical Scandinavian cinema, Haugerud remains true to psychological depth while filtering it through the lyricism and literary qualities of his work.”
For tickets please go here.
For more information or to view the festival’s full schedule, click here.
