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Yes, we, Greeks, Can(nes) 2013!

By NEO Magazine on June 20, 2013

by Vasileios Terzopoulos

It was great that Greece had a notable presence on the croisette this past May, despite the absence of a Greek film in Cannes’ Official Selection.

Alexander Payne or Alexandros Constantine Papadopoulos brought Hellenic air for one more year in a row at the Cote d’Azur with the film “Nebraska” that received very good critics and a lot of stars from the members of the jury. While his biggest success was Bruce Dern, his lead actor in the picture, that won the award for the Best Performance by a Male Actor.

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“The life of Adele” deservedly, as the film society stated, won the prestigious film prize Palme d’Or at Cannes. The film is made by a French director of Tunisian origin Abdellatif Kechiche, and the main character was played by Adele Exarchopoulos who is of Greek origin on her father’s side. As she told us, she would like to visit Greece soon, although the only Greek word that she knows so far is …”feta”.

More Greeks were to be found at the Croissete …like some of our favorite Greek French men of cinema, the actor and producer George Corraface and Alexandre Desplat whose music can be heard in two films that we saw at the festival. The actress Anna Rezan Kritseli who met with the producer Aspasia Koumli, presented a project in which she participated recently. Constantinos Isaias’ documentary ‘We love Cyprus” was also there as was Christos Konstantakopoulos who is one of the producers of Jim Jarmusch’s new film “Only Lovers Left Alive” , another official selection of this year’s edition of the Cannes Film Festival.

And the Greek story continues while apparently the Île de France Film Commission, the German Media Council of Berlin-Brandenburg and the Film Commissions of Madrid and Rome/Lazio have chosen Greece as the special guest in this years gathering in “Regions Capitales pour Le Cinema”. So, during the 66th Cannes Film Festival some of Greece’s film producers, those that sustain Greek cinema and keep it alive and have been working towards the local industry’s extroversion, came to the city to discuss international collaborations. To be frank most of them financed their trips on their own and made their way to Europe’s most important film festival to claim a share of the market.

Olivier-René Veillon of Île de France, Demosthenes Davvetas, the Cultural Affairs Counselor of the Greek Prime Minister’s office, Greek Film Center’s president George Papalios and the GFC’s General Director Gregory Karantinakis met with the above prestigious organizations along with a group of Greek producers and directors like Yorgos Tsourgiannis, Giorgos Karnavas, Konstantinos Kontovrakis, Argyris Papadimitropoulos, Kostas Kefalas, Margarita Manda, Vardis Marinakis and Syllas Tzoumerkas.

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