AWARDS Greece
Hellenic Film Academy Awards nominees announced
by Joseph Proimakis
05/04/2012 - Gearing up for its third annual awards for local production companies’ finest titles, the Hellenic Film Academy announced its nominees yesterday afternoon. Of 21 entries in fiction, 11 made the shortlist, with Philippos Tsitos’ award-winning Unfair World (pictured) and Yorgos Siougas’ feature debut Burning Heads rising up as favorites with 11 nominations each, including Best Feature for both, Best Director for Tsitos, and Best New Director for Siougas.
Giorgos Gikapeppas’s The City of Children, winner of local and international critics’ awards at last year’s Thessaloniki International Film Festival, came second with five nominations including Best New Director, Best Screenplay and Best Feature, while the Best Feature category also included previous Academy GC member Dimitris Athanitis’s Three Days of Happiness, and Elias Demetriou’s Fish ‘n’ Chips. The three titles have yet to be distributed in local theatres.
The absence of Yorgos Lanthimos’s Alps [trailer] from all categories but Best Screenplay and Best Make-up was the announcement’s major shocker, while the Academy held a pleasant surprise for Panagiotis Fafoutis, who saw his Paradise garner praise in five categories, including Best Editing and Best Supporting Actress for veteran thesp Olia Lazaridou.
While in previous installments the HFA Awards proved problematic when the Academy refused to address the wildfire rumours regarding the reportedly large abstinence of members from the voting process, new Academy head Katerina Evangelakou this year revealed that participation was a little more than 50%. When asked to comment, she replied that the struggles Greek film professionals are going through are too hard for them to set work aside and invest in the series of screenings required to take part in the first round of voting.
