Every year, we eagerly await September and the beginning of the AIFF planning.
We love the thrill of getting the freshly printed catalogue, reading about each film, and crafting a screening schedule with about 2 films per day. We carefully calculate travel times from one cinema to the next—”maybe if we leave 5 minutes early from this screening, we’ll only miss 5 minutes of the next, hopefully just the commercials”.
Naturally, everyone waits for the new films that swept Cannes off their feet and the highly anticipated new releases. But we are especially keen on seeing the Festival’s fantastic Tributes and Special Screenings—films that you otherwise wouldn’t have the chance to see on a big screen.
So here is our selection of this year’s Athens International Film Festival:
THE ROOM NEXT DOOR
Ingrid (Julianne Moore) and Martha (Tilda Swinton) were close friends in their youth, when they worked together at the same magazine. Ingrid went on to become an autofiction novelist while Martha became a war reporter, and they were separated by the circumstances of life. After years of being out of touch, they meet again in an extreme but strangely sweet situation. In his first English-language feature film, Almodovar continues to praise women as a mysterious, unstoppable force, full of courage and empathy in the face of adversity. Expertly performed ode to friendship, powerful argument for the individual’s right to determine its own destiny, and a statement of faith in companionship as pure hope in a world increasingly devoid of it. Golden Lion at this year's Venice Film Festival.
THE BRUTALIST
One of the most ambitious films financed by an American studio in recent decades, “The Brutalist” is a moviemaking event of 2024. In the role that will seal his career, Adrien Brody plays a Hungarian architect, a Holocaust survivor, who arrives in the US shortly after the end of WWII in search of the American Dream. He goes from being a poor laborer to becoming the protégé of an eccentric multi-millionaire undertaking the construction of a monumental building on his behalf. An allegory about immigration, America as the elusive Promised Land and the predatory nature of wealth, but also a film about Art as the only thing capable of defeating time and transcending human drama. Director's Prize at the Venice Film Festival.
MEGALOPOLIS
The very existence of this film provokes elevated emotion. “Megalopolis” is a torrential sci-fi allegory, featuring an architect/scientist pioneer with the ability to regulate time and space, who bases his dream of a utopian metropolis of the future on a miraculous construction material. Coppola draws unexpected parallels between the sociopolitical conditions that led ancient Rome to destruction and the image of a contemporary America undermined by similar dangers and driven by similar passions. A baroque satire of human vanity and a kind of romantic legacy for future generations, this is a magnum opus of such audacity and daring directorial folly, the likes of which is rarely seen in cinema anymore.
MOGWAI: IF THE STARS HAD A SOUND
Guiding us through the history, city, ideas and production process of Mogwai, the documentary takes the viewer on an all-inclusive journey from the band's musical roots to the recording of their tenth album, during the pandemic. The soundscapes alongside the rich archival footage make for an interstellar journey. It is not long before the protagonists themselves take the driver's seat, as the band members have the opportunity to tell for first time the story as they lived it. Anthony Crook, one of their steady collaborators, lets equal parts of roughness and sensitivity seep into the picture, ultimately crafting a competent musical portrait, capable of satiating hardcore fans and first-timers alike of the Mogwai phenomenon.
DEVO
One of the most anarchic and avant-garde bands of the American new wave - a favorite of David Bowie and several other acclaimed artists - gets the documentary it deserves. Intensely directed, featuring plenty of archival footage and delightful interviews with the band members, this frenetic chronicle follows Devo's meteoric rise during a defining period for America. It begins with the political and social turmoil of the 1970s, out of which the band emerged ideologically and musically, moves through the conflict with the neo-conservative and fully commercialized 1980s, and reaches up to the present day, translating the band's cultural legacy into a non-stop entertaining cinematic journey.
ENO
AIFF invites you to discover a new, exclusive component of the Brian Eno phenomenon, through a cinematic mosaic created especially for the festival, one that will cease to exist after the screening. Eno is a mentor of art rock, a tracker of pop avant garde inclinations, an explorer of the far reaches of ambient and electronic music, and undoubtedly a universally recognized genius of contemporary sound. Speaking of a multifaceted artist who identified himself as a "non-musician" and regarded mixing desks as musical instruments, one would not expect anything conventional from his official biography. Still, Gary Hustwit takes the unusual to new heights. It's a literally unique experience, a film recreated at every performance through dozens of hours of footage.
THE SUBSTANCE
In her most outrageously gutsy performance, Demi Moore plays an Oscar winner-star, now a washed-up TV fitness show host. When the network replaces her with a younger woman, she resorts to a mysterious substance that promises to bring out -literally- her best, youngest and most beautiful self. Not without a price. Nothing prepares you for the film that made Cannes resound with howls of disgust and excitement, as Coralie Fargeat puts the most generous doses of body horror of the last decade into her feminist blender to deliver a delightful satire of the entertainment industry's attitude towards women. Unapologetically camp and indescribably gory, the brazen film won Best Screenplay at Cannes, giving new meaning to the term midnight movie.
I KNOW WHERE I’M GOING!
One of the most beautiful films ever made, this enchanting work stars Joan, who is about to leave her frenetic bachelor life and head to the Scottish coast to meet her future husband. But rapidly worsening weather forces her to take temporary refuge in a coastal and windswept hamlet, which will become the catalyst that will free her from the universe of reason and take her into the uncharted land of instincts and heart. By giving the film majestic, almost supernatural dimensions, the filmmakers take the clay of a romantic story and transform it into a mystical fairy tale blown by the wind, scoured by the waves and vibrated by an eternal belief in the power of love.
THRONE OF BLOOD | KUMONOSU-JŌ
One of the greatest Shakespeare adaptations the cinema has ever known, “Throne of Blood” takes “Macbeth” to the eerie, foggy world of medieval Japan to tell the story of the rise to power of an overambitious usurper samurai seduced by a dark prophecy and his ruthless wife. Stripping the plot of “the Scottish play” to its essentials and incorporating elements from traditional Japanese Noh theatre, Kurosawa transforms the familiar story about the terrifying consequences of power-hunger into a riveting masterpiece where the narrative is primarily motivated by a shocking iconography, and natural elements create a sense of inevitable doom, right up to the unsurpassed, transcendent finale worthy of an ancient Greek tragedy.
DREAMS | YUME
Inspired by Kurosawa's own recurring dreams, the film dives into the subconscious, a world where reality and fantasy, past, present and future, coexist in phantasmagorical landscapes that take shape through the rare visual empathy of the great filmmaker. From the innocent figments of a child's imagination to the ghosts of war and the apocalyptic images of a nuclear disaster, Kurosawa shares his deep concerns about the human condition, the role of art, our relationship with nature and the consequences of our actions, through eight visually dazzling episodes. Plagued with funding problems, “Dreams” was completed thanks to the help of four… fans: Lucas, Coppola, Spielberg and Scorsese who appeared as Vincent van Gogh.
IKIRU
A rigid bureaucrat in post-war Tokyo learns he has cancer and one year to live. His character will be radically transformed. Rooted in a Kurosawa idea, in conversation with Tolstoy's "Death of Ivan Ilyich" and with exemplary writing by two of the director's key screenwriters, "Ikiru" ("To Live") is the ultimate "contemporary" Kurosawa, a monument on the importance of being Human. Understated yet emotionally charged, superbly photographed and inimitably performed by the great Takashi Shimura, here is a film, perhaps hopelessly against the contemporary tide, that still brings the focus back not only to the important questions but also to their answer. Core, revolutionary cinema.
THE IDIOT | HAKUCHI
Kurosawa never hid his adoration for Dostoyevsky. This was to be documented in “The Idiot”, one of cinema's outstanding "ill masterworks" (to quote Truffaut). The film was slaughtered by the studio in its original almost 4½ hour version, originally 100 (!) minutes left and subsequently only the cut we present to you survives. To the discerning eye the editing interventions are visible, but no less than a stunningly executed cinematic chant that studies the human character and extends it to its tormented infinity. Here lies the other, grim "difficult" Kurosawa, unparalleled in his compositional rigor, masterful in the balance of melodrama and tragedy, eternal believer in the church of man.
THE NAKED KISS
A prostitute tries to change her ways, but the small American town, its authorities (and men) won't let her. She will respond. Samuel Fuller was never a "good boy", but when he went independent he really exploded. And everyone must have felt it, as the film, even from the typically “disreputable” b circuit, beams ahead of its time by telling it like it is. You see, prostitution, abuse, abortion were absent even from the Kennedy-era agenda, just as the complete subversion of women, here almost unprecedentedly empowered. Trashy, camp, constantly aggressive and provocative, here is the cinema Hollywood would understand years later. And David Lynch was taking notes.
WITHNAIL AND I
Two unemployed and impoverished actors straddle the fine line between the wildly comic and the heartbreakingly tragic. Those fallen dandys live shakily in a cold London apartment-dump, finding no solace either in their desperate alcoholic escapades or in the redemptive boredom of the countryside to which they retreat adventurously. Drawing from his own life, Robinson has concocted perhaps the best dialogues (and a unique finale) in the history of British cinema for these two fascinating characters who find themselves on the brink of nothingness, perpetually stoned. Richard Grant’s sardonic lines are one of the main reasons why this unforgettable film is the ultimate cult movie of the modern British screen.
Happy watching and see you out there!