20/10/2009

Previously known as Filmmakers in the Mist and now renamed to FOG (Filmmakers of Greece), the rogue group of filmmakers that decided to boycott the Greek State Awards by keeping their films away from this year’s 50th anniversary of the Thessaloniki International Film Festival [see news], has come back to inaugurate a week of screenings devoted solely to new Greek films, aptly titled Fog Films.

Though the recent change in government did spread a breath of optimism in the group’s ranks, FOG do maintain plans to turn this week-long showcase of Greek cinema into a yearly event, in case their demands for new, modern and effective film legislation are not met.

Acclaimed films like Yorgos Lanthimos’ Cannes winner Dogtooth [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Yorgos Lanthimos
film profile], Filippos Tsitos’ Locarno winner Plato’s Academy [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Constantin Moriatis
interview: Filippos Tsitos
interview: Filippos Tsitos
film profile] and Panos H Koutras’ Berlinale show-cased Strella [+see also:
trailer
film profile] will be among the 23 feature films and documentaries being screened, as will Greek co-productions Eden is West [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Costa Gavras and Fugitive Pieces by Jeremy Podeswa, locally produced by members of the FOG collective.

Stella Theodoraki’s Ricordi Mi and Margarita Manda’s Hrisoskoni will be making their second ever public screenings, while Vardis Marinakis’ highly anticipated period film Black Field will be having its world premiere at what the organizers refuse to call a festival.

“We have no intention of hurting the Thessaloniki International Film Festival, which, after all, acknowledges our motion” says Thanos Anastopoulos, prominent FOG member and winner of the Best Screenplay and Third Best Film prizes at 2007’s Greek State Awards for his film Correction.

“We appreciate what Thessaloniki has done for Greek films, for the local industry, for all of us in the past years, and we’re not one bit happy to choose to abstain, but these are decisions we have to make,” Anastopoulos goes on. “We have no intention of setting up an anti-festival, so we are going to keep that term away.”