In Athens, Thursdays have quietly become the city’s new Saturday — the night when streets hum with energy, bars overflow, and every corner of the capital feels alive. But for the city’s film lovers, Thursday means something else entirely: it’s the day new movies land on the big screen.

This week, the anticipation is electric. For Yorgos Lanthimos’ thousands of Greek admirers and fans — the country’s most internationally acclaimed filmmaker — this Thursday marks the long-awaited arrival of Bugonia. The film, already making waves on the festival circuit, finally meets its Greek audience.

And yet, beneath the excitement, there’s a bittersweet note: Bugonia may be Lanthimos’s last project for a while.

Lanthimos Hits Pause

The Oscar-winning director, whose films have garnered 23 Academy Award nominations and five wins, revealed in a recent Collider interview that he plans to take a break from filmmaking after a relentless creative run.

“I can’t keep doing that anymore. That’s what we’re certain of right now,” he told Collider, adding: “It’s a big mistake. I think I need a break. I’ve said that before in between the other three, but I’m serious now. You can hold me to it. I’m going to take a little break.”

It’s not the first time Lanthimos has stepped back. After The Favourite (2018) swept Hollywood, he disappeared from the spotlight for five years before returning with Poor Things in 2023 — a triumphant comeback that cemented his place among global cinema’s most daring auteurs.

Inside Bugonia

“I have never before been given a script that felt so ready to be made,” Lanthimos said about Bugonia. “I just thought it was so funny and entertaining but also extremely impactful and made you really think about things deeply. I immediately was interested in making it. It felt very relevant then — and that was three years ago — and it feels even more relevant now.”

Bugonia (2025) is an English-language absurdist black comedy thriller — a remake of Jang Joon-hwan’s 2003 South Korean cult classic Save the Green Planet!. The adaptation, written by Will Tracy, had been in development for several years, with American filmmaker Ari Aster previously attached before Lanthimos came on board to direct.

Already released in the U.S., Ireland, South Korea, and now Greece, Bugonia follows two young men who kidnap a powerful CEO, convinced she’s an alien plotting to destroy Earth. But while its premise flirts with dystopia, both Lanthimos and his frequent collaborator Emma Stone see something more grounded — and disturbingly real.
“Not much of the dystopia in this film is very fictional,” Lanthimos told reporters at the Venice Film Festival.

As time passed, the film’s themes only seemed to resonate more deeply.

“Humanity is facing a reckoning very soon,” he said. “People need to choose the right path in many ways — otherwise I don’t know how much time we have with everything that’s happening in the world with technology, with AI, with wars … climate change.”

Academy Award-winning actress Emma Stone, collaborating with Lanthimos for the fourth time, described Bugonia as “reflective of this point in time in our world” and a “really fascinating and moving, funny and fucked up, and alive” project.

The film — a co-production between Ireland, South Korea, and the United States — stars Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Aidan Delbis, Stavros Halkias, and Alicia Silverstone.

As Lanthimos himself said in Venice, he hopes Bugonia will “trigger people to think about what’s happening today all over the world.”

Greek film critic Giannis Zoumboulakis of To Vima described the film as “a sweet introduction that soon clashes with a brutally pessimistic ending,” noting Lanthimos’s trademark interplay of beauty and unease:
“With a close-up on a luminous flower approached by a bee — ‘like sex, but cleaner, no one gets hurt’ — Lanthimos sets you up for something special, as always. This gentle opening, a symbolic hymn to life’s beauty, soon gives way to a stark contrast and a darkly powerful finale.”

Now showing across Athens — including Village Cinemas, Options Cinemas, Cinobo Opera, the Greek Film Archive, Danaos, Nirvana, Aello, Nana, Kifisia, Aigli Halandri, Phoivos, West City, Sporting, Cineak and more — Bugonia is also screening in Thessaloniki at ODEON Plateia, Village Cosmos, and Cine Vakoura, among others.

Greek Cinema Steps Into the European Spotlight

Bugonia also leads Greece’s presence on this year’s European Film Awards shortlist. It’s one of 67 feature films selected by the European Film Academy for the 38th edition, which will take place in Berlin on January 17, 2026.

Two other Greek co-productions — Bearcave (Arkoudotrypa) by Krysianna B. Papadakis and Stergios Dinopoulos, and Milk Teeth by Mihai Mincan — are also on the list, signaling Greece’s growing role in European cinema. Bearcave had already won the Europa Cinemas Venice Label Award for Best European Film — the first time a Greek production has received the honor.

A scene from Bearcave (Arkoudotrypa) directed by Krysianna B. Papadakis and Stergios Dinopoulos.

More New Films Light Up Athens Screens

Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk (2025)
In this powerful documentary by Iranian filmmaker Sepideh Farsi, life under bombardment in Gaza is captured through the lens of the late Fatima Hassouna, a local photojournalist. Beginning as a series of digital exchanges between the two women — more than 200 days of recorded calls and video diaries — the film transforms into a haunting portrait of daily existence under siege.

Hassouna, at the age of 26, was killed, along with nine family members, in an Israeli airstrike in April 2025. The documentary premiered in Cannes’ ACID section where the festival released an official statement expressing condolences and criticizing the ongoing violence in Gaza.

Coexistence, My Ass (2025)
Directed by Lebanese-Canadian filmmaker Amber Fares, this bold documentary follows Israeli comedian Noam Shuster Eliassi as she performs her provocative one-woman show, dissecting the absurdities of inequality and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. With biting humor and disarming honesty, Shuster Eliassi challenges audiences’ notions of “coexistence.”

The film, which premiered at Sundance 2025, won the World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award for Freedom of Expression, as well as the Human Rights in Motion Award (Council of Europe) and the Golden Alexander Award for Best Documentary at the 27th Thessaloniki International Film Festival.

Also opening this week are Predator: Badlands, Christy, The Surrender, and the animated fable Grand Prix of Europe — rounding out one of the year’s most dynamic release slates, and providing a fitting backdrop to Yorgos Lanthimos’s own cinematic intermission.