This new section’s role within the festival is to present some of the most recent examples from the international cinema of innovation and experimentation. It is a small but dynamic module and it focuses on just a few but really important works which manage to stretch the limitations of form, of narration and subject matter.

We will be seeing these films in Athens first, before they reach their international audiences elsewhere, because it is our conviction that Greek filmgoers, despite the given limitations imposed by the economic crisis, are entitled to share in the developments of international cinema and not to just follow them.

All films in this section are first feature films, albeit by directors who have excelled in other fields, like the successful artists Shaina Anand and Ashok Sukumaran (CAMP), the, up until now DOP, Gym Lumbera or the prolific theorist and programmer Gabe Klinger. Almost all the films in the programs have received awards at their premieres, their film festival exposure is just starting, and almost all the filmmakers will attend their screenings in Athens to converse with our audiences.

This is all proof of the respect that both we and the filmmakers have for the Athenian audience and for its view of this cinema. A cinema that might be different, but is not detached, and which observes, interacts with, and influences the broader film language.

Vassily Bourikas