05/08/2013 - The Greek sculptor, whose artful film debut swept the local State Awards, vies for the Golden Lion with a suicide tale

Acclaimed sculptor and painter Alexandros Avranas is no stranger to the local film world: his feature debut, Without, a no-budget cinematic experiment, documenting a family’s struggles against the horrors of a corporate world, came out of nowhere to pick up five State Awards in 2008.

Though his film failed to secure local distribution and was never screened outside the Thessaloniki International Film Festival where it premiered, one can argue that his dystopic vision of a society stacked against the meltdown of an economic crisis was quite ahead of its time.

His latest project may prove to be a follow-up of sorts. Miss Violence [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Alexandros Avranas
film profile] is an 11-year-old girl who leaps off her balcony on her birthday, falling to her death with a smile on her face. The story follows the aftermath of the girl’s enigmatic suicide, the secrets she took to her grave, and her family’s zealous rush to forget and move on, quickly replacing any reminder that their daughter ever existed.

Based on a true incident that was recounted to him while in Berlin prepping his next cinematic venture, the story of a young girl’s suicide became an immediate priority for the director, who morphed it into his sophomore film. “I was preparing Europa, a film I had already finished the script for”, he recounts, “but then I dropped everything to work on this amazing story I’d just heard.”

“I’m very much interested in what can be called the familial landscape”, the director explains. “It’s a starting point from where you can expand to social and political realities,” he goes on, noting that Miss Violence is a very cruel film: “There’s no raw violence”, he says, “but it’s as cruel as the society we live in. It’s about the things you can’t see coming, things you cannot fathom. It’s about the things that blindside you”.