Stella Kyriakopoulos’ sophomore short film, Volta (lit. “Stroll”), will become Greece’s first-ever entry in the Sundance short-film competition when the film has its US premiere at the Park City festival this January. 

A second short but first narrative effort, Kyriakopoulos’ film had its world premiere at the Drama International Short Film Festival in September, where it picked up the Best Actress Award for Marisha Triantafyllidou’s performance as a struggling single mother who takes her young daughter out for a Sunday stroll. 

Co-starring the young Katerina Douka, Kyriakopoulos’ ominous yet bittersweet take on the financial meltdown tormenting the country’s working classes, via the story of a heartbreakingly tender walk through Athens, all the way to a very unexpected destination in the city’s wealthy northern suburbs, won the director a Special Mention from the Drama jury. The film was also widely acclaimed by the attending press.

Having begun as a Kickstarter project, where it gathered over $6,000 in funds, the film was produced by Kyriakopoulos along with Exile Films’ Despina Pavlaki and Valerie Kontakos, with support from the Greek Film Centre.

Born in New Jersey but raised in Athens, Kyriakopoulos is an Athens School of Fine Arts alumna with a Masters in Fine Arts from the Tisch School of the Arts (New York University), who currently lives between Athens and New York working as an editor.