MOST WATCHED 2023

Overturning all the clichés of period films, Marie Kreutzer makes a modern and unconventional film, where Vicky Krieps gives a masterful performance as Empress Sissi, disappearing inside the tight corset of self-restraint and social criticism of the intertemporal patriarchy. — On Christmas 1877, Sissi celebrates her 40th birthday. As the First Lady of Austria and wife of the emperor, she is not allowed to express herself and must remain the beautiful young empress forever. To meet these expectations, she follows a strict program of fasting, exercise, combing her hair and measuring her waistline daily. Stifled by these conventions, hungry for knowledge and life, Sissi rebels more and more against this image. — Best Performance - Un Certain Regard (Vicky Krieps) | Cannes Film Festival | 2022 Best Actress (Vicki Krieps) | Sarajevo Film Festival | 2022 Best Film | London Film Festival | 2022

Stormy political thriller from the director of the audience favourite, The Nile Hilton Incident, in a style reminiscent of the book The Name of the Rose. A mystery turns into a paranoid nightmare through a boldly anti-clerical screenplay that was awarded at Cannes. — Adam wins a place at Al-Azhar University, the center of power in Sunni Islam. Shortly after arriving in Cairo, the university's religious leader - the Grand Imam - collapses and dies in front of his students. This event marks the beginning of a battle for his position, while Adam soon becomes a pawn in the ruthless supremacy struggle between Egypt's religious and political elite. — Official Selection | Cannes Film Festival | 2022 Best Screenplay | Cannes Film Festival | 2022

An instant classic of the 21st century, a stylized encounter between Vertigo and In the Mood for Love. Detective mystery, mind games, guilt and obsession in a noir emotional melodrama by the one and only Park Chan-wook (The Handmaiden) who was awarded Best Director at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival. — A detective investigating a man's death meets the victim's wife during his persistent investigations. Soon he will be confronted with his suspicions, while falling for her at the same time. — Best Director | Cannes Films Festival | 2022

Dominik Moll found this story in a book by a journalist who spent a year embedded with France’s criminal police, and he built the film around one of its cases, a young woman set alight on her way home. About one in five cases like hers is never solved. — Clara was twenty-one and walking home from a friend’s place at night when someone doused her in petrol and set her alight. Her file lands on the desk of Yohan Vivès only days after he takes over the murder squad in Grenoble, and he and his team start working through every man she knew. There are a lot of them. — Official Selection - Cannes Premiere | Cannes Film Festival | 2022 Best Film | César Awards | 2023 Best Director | César Awards | 2023 Best Supporting Actor (Bouli Lanners) | César Awards | 2023

In the spirit of Linklater's Before trilogy and with DIY attitude, the Greek film of the year follows two people on a magically melancholic journey. Awards in Thessaloniki and a triumph at the Hellenic Film Academy Awards for the directorial debut of comic book creator Giorgos Goussis. — Elena is traveling with no destination and unexpectedly boards the ship to Kefalonia. Antonis, who is on the same ship, is heading to the island's cemetery to bury his aunt's ossuary. When his car breaks down, Elena offers to take him to a hotel and then again the next day to the cemetery, where they are told they can't keep the box for bureaucratic reasons. Having enjoyed each other's company, they decide to continue roaming around the island looking for a good place to bury the box. — Golden Alexander | Thessaloniki Film Festival | 2021 FIPRESCI Award | Thessaloniki Film Festival | 2021 Greek National Television Award | Thessaloniki Film Festival | 2021 Best Film | Hellenic Film Academy Awards | 2022 Best Actress (Elena Topalidou) | Hellenic Film Academy Awards | 2022

Ali Abbasi (Border) revisits the case of a 2001 serial killer, in a well-structured and suspenseful thriller, where every detail reveals the pressure and misogyny of the collective Iranian unconscious. — Peaceful family man in the morning, hardened criminal at night: A serial killer roams the night streets of the holy city of Mashhad exterminating prostitutes, because this is how he thinks he is purifying the world of sinners. Until a fearless journalist decides to put her life in danger in order to expose him. — Best Actress Award (Zar Amir-Ebrahimi) | Cannes Film Festival | 2022

Oscar-nominated, tender adaptation of an acclaimed short story about a young girl who discovers a secret that will change her life. Impressive directorial debut from Ireland, which eschews the conventions of a coming-of-age film, and synchronizes the heart of the story with the pulse of the viewer. — Due to her mother’s pregnancy, Cáit, the young daughter of a large, poor family - a truly quiet girl, will spend the summer with distant relatives. Thanks to their care, she will slowly find her voice in the idyllic setting of the Irish countryside. But while there are supposed to be no secrets among the members of her new family, she will discover one. — Nomination for Best Foreign Language Film | Oscars | 2023 Nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay | BAFTA | 2023 Official Selection | Berlin Film Festival | 2022

A colorful, funny and impetuously honest coming-of-age story about two diametrically opposed sisters and the decisions they have to make in the course of one night. The best student film of the year, talks about all kinds of human connection -the basic survival tool in a scary world. — Sixteen-year-old Mati is naive, lovable and spontaneous, with a burning need to live the romantic dream of a cheap soap opera. Her older sister, Themi, forced into an early adulthood, must settle an overdue debt. Desperate to find money, each of them will start their own journey and they will be confronted with a traumatic past, a disturbing reality and above all the difficulty of supporting a family tooth and nail. — Best Student Film | Hellenic Film Academy | 2023 Best Student Film Award | Drama Short Film Festival | 2022 Official Selection | Olympia Film Festival for Children and Young People | 2022 Official Selection | Greek Film Festival in Berlin | 2022

Honored at Athens International Film Festival, Cannes and a host of international film festivals, Saim Sadiq's explosive directorial debut sets fire to prejudices and gender stereotypes, speaking of the liberating power of love. — As the happy patriarchal Rana family longs for the birth of a boy, the youngest of the men in the family sneaks into a love dance theater and ends up falling in love with a dynamic and ambitious trans starlet. Their forbidden love story slowly illuminates the whole family's desire for sexual revolution. — Queer Palm | Cannes Film Festival | 2022 Jury Prize - Un Certain Regard | Cannes Film Festival | 2022 Sutherland Award (Honourable Mention) | London Film Festival | 2022 Best Screenplay | Athens Film Festival | 2022

Park Ji-min, a visual artist who had never been in front of a camera, is extraordinary in the lead. The film goes back to 2011, when the director travelled to Korea with a friend adopted from there and was at her side as she met her biological father, and ten years later it made it to Cannes. — A cancelled flight lands Freddie, twenty-five and French, in Seoul, the city where she was born and given up for adoption when she was a few months old. Within days she is sitting in an adoption agency, set on tracking down the two people who gave her away. One of them writes back. — Official Selection - Un Certain Regard | Cannes Film Festival | 2022 Golden Athena | Athens International Film Festival | 2022

Hirokazu Koreeda (“Shoplifters”) doesn’t speak Korean, but that didn’t stop him making a film in it, and Song Kang-ho (“Parasite”) became the first Korean man ever to leave Cannes with an acting prize. Two con men steal an abandoned baby to sell to parents who’ll pay, and we end up rooting for them. — On a rainy night a woman leaves her baby in a church baby box and walks away, and the two men who work there take the boy before anyone can register him. When she comes back the next morning, she climbs into their van instead of going to the police. The three of them set off across the country looking for a couple who’ll pay for the child, with two policewomen watching their every move. — Best Actor Award (Song Kang-Ho) | Cannes Film Festival | 2022 Prize of the Ecumenical Jury | Cannes Film Festival | 2022

Louis Garrel (“The Dreamers”) turned his own family story into a crime comedy: his mother spent years running acting workshops in prisons and then married one of the inmates. Garrel plays the son who tries to stop the wedding. — Abel’s mother runs drama classes in a prison, and she has just announced that she’s marrying one of the inmates, a man due out in a few months. Abel is certain it can only end badly. Then he starts getting to know his future stepfather, and the more he learns, the less certain he is about anything. — Official Selection - Out of Competition | Cannes Film Festival | 2022 11 Nominations | César Awards | 2023 Best Original Screenplay | César Awards | 2023 Best Supporting Actress (Noémie Merlant) | César Awards | 2023

The reinvention of the Greek family in an improvised and playful paradise of youth, overflowing with glitter and soul. Silver Alexander Award at the Thessaloniki Film Festival for the feature debut of Nikos Pastras, which was discussed as few others in summer cinemas of 2023. — The Bastards have left the city alone. In the countryside, their new home only smells of summer. Five girls and five boys live here, now, for the present. No one gets near here, here all of them keep watch, kiss each other, play dead. They are still kids. They are your kids. They are our Bastards. — Silver Alexander - Film Forward | Thessaloniki Film Festival | 2022

Emmanuel Marre and Julie Lecoustre depict the absurd and inhumane professional environment in which Adèle Exarchopoulos embodies, with gravity and irreverence, the existential wanderings of a young woman in flight. — Cassandre, 26, is a flight attendant for a low-cost airline. By fully embracing her flight-to-flight and party-after-party lifestyle, she stays faithful to her Tinder username "Carpe Diem". An unattached existence by the means of forging ahead without care is apparently fulfilling to her, until a mishap forces her to reconnect with the world. Will Cassandre be able to confront her buried pain and return to those she has left on the ground? — Official Selection - Critic's Week | Cannes Film Festival | 2021

Nominated for an Oscar for Adapted Screenplay and a Golden Globe for Best Actress, an incredible yet true story of gambling and illegality with the indelible signature of Aaron Sorkin and the sweeping leading performance of Jessica Chastain. — The true story of an Olympic-class skier who after an accident abandoned her dream and began organizing exclusive and high stakes poker games for a decade, until her arrest in the middle of the night by FBI agents. — Nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay | Oscars | 2018 Nomination for Best Actress (Jessica Chastain) | Golden Globes | 2018

The best comedies are based on fact, and a Swedish director really did stage Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot” with a cast of prisoners. This French version of the story won a European Film Award, and you’ll come out of it in a better mood than you went in. — No one will give Étienne an acting job, so he takes one running theatre workshops in a prison instead. There he talks the inmates into putting on “Waiting for Godot”, a play about two men waiting for someone who never comes. And the prisoners, it turns out, are good at it. — Best European Comedy | European Film Awards | 2020

Akira Kurosawa took “King Lear” to feudal Japan and earned the only Best Director Oscar nomination of his career. A real castle was built on the slopes of Mount Fuji and burned down for real, and Tatsuya Nakadai walks out of the flames in a single take, since there was never going to be another. — At seventy, Hidetora Ichimonji has spent a lifetime taking this land by the sword, and now he calls his three sons together. Taro is to have the First Castle, Jiro the Second and Saburo the Third, on condition that the brothers stand firmly behind the eldest. When Saburo tells his father the truth, he is banished before the day is out. — Best Costume Design | Oscars | 1986 Nomination for Best Director | Oscars | 1986 Best Foreign Language Film | BAFTA | 1987 OCIC Award for Best Director | San Sebastian Film Festival | 1985

Originally drawing from the cinema of Yannis Economides, Fokion Bogris soon develops his story by following his own unique path, and provides us with one of the finest samples of fresh Greek cinema, with noir references and remarkable realism in the depiction of his world. — Vaggelis, a remnant of the rave generation, gets by selling weed. He would like a steady job with no risks. Petros, a thug from the southern suburbs. He wants respect and a family. Katerina, unwittingly, brings them under the same roof. — Best Supporting Actor Award (Stathis Stamoulakatos) | Hellenic Film Academy | 2021

An appreciative, festival-friendly addition to Woody Allen's "european films", set this time in the enchanting San Sebastián and its local film festival, which serves as a breeding ground for humorous stories arising from the anxieties and neuroses of its protagonists. — Intellectual Mort Rifkin accompanies his wife Sue to Spain's prestigious San Sebastian Film Festival, worried about her falling out with young director Philippe. While Sue is passionately involved with the charming Philippe, Mort meets the sweet Dr. Rojas and something inside him changes. A mood to review life through the power of classic cinema rekindles Mort's hope for the future.

Gripping and topical crime thriller about modern cities. Police violence, corruption, gentrification, in a puzzle of violence and dark interests that will keep you at the end of your seat. From the super-successful creative duo Rodrigo Sorogoyen and Isabel Peña ("The Candidate", "Mother"). — During a violent eviction in a historic neighborhood of Madrid, an immigrant from Africa falls to the ground and is killed, in the presence of 6 special forces police officers. The internal affairs department begins a complex investigation to find out: are the men of the Riot Police to blame or is there something deeper to this shadowy case? Research will soon show that not everything is as it seems.

Combining the stories of everyday work madness of The Office with the mysterious and eerie setting of The X-Files, throwing in a dose of 70s and pastel colors, this hilarious satire of science fiction (and not only) stories has humor, heart and our very own Daphne Patakia. — 1978. Didier Mathure, a great space scientist, is transferred to GEPAN, a unit that specializes in UFOs and is made up of people who seem to be on their own planet. Seeing an object himself, he leaves logic behind and travels the country in search of new clues.