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THESSALONIKI DOCUMENTARY 2020

The 22nd Thessaloniki Documentary Festival goes online

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- The most important documentary gathering in Greece will present its entire programme of 210 films online while special tributes and live discussions will also be on the menu

The 22nd Thessaloniki Documentary Festival goes online
The Unknown Athenians by Angeliki Antoniou

The 22nd Thessaloniki Documentary Festival (TDF) was one of the first events in Europe that was forced to make the decision not to run during its original dates (see the news). The festival, which was originally postponed to a later date, has decided to run online instead, as the pandemic situation is still critical. With 210 documentaries from around the globe set to screen, the TDF will run online from 19-28 May, and users from Greece can register on the festival’s website to watch the selection. Each film will be available for 400 screenings.

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Ten documentaries are competing for the Golden Alexander in TDF’s Feature Length International Competition, and all films but one are European co-productions, including three Greek documentaries. The selected docs are Acasă - My Home [+see also:
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interview: Radu Ciorniciuc
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by Radu Ciorniciuc (Romania/Finland/Germany), King of the Cruise [+see also:
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by Sophie Dros (Netherlands), Meanwhile on Earth [+see also:
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by Carl Olsson (Sweden), Sing Me a Song [+see also:
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by Thomas Balmès (France/Germany/Switzerland), Slow News [+see also:
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by Alberto Puliafito (Italy), The Prophet and the Space Aliens [+see also:
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by Yoav Shamir (Israel/Austria/South Africa), Welcome to Chechnya by David France (USA), and the local docs The Fourth Character [+see also:
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interview: Katerina Patroni
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by Katerina Patroni (Greece), The Music of Things [+see also:
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interview: Menios Carayannis
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by Menios Carayannis (Greece) and The Unknown Athenians by Angeliki Antoniou (Greece/Germany).

Furthermore, 12 first-time and sophomore filmmakers are competing in the “Newcomers” International Competition, with the selection featuring #387 by Madeleine Leroyer (France/Belgium), Always Amber [+see also:
film review
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interview: Hannah Reinikainen, Lia Hie…
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by Lia Hietala and Hannah Reinikainen (Sweden), Everything Must Go by Gianluca Matarrese (Italy/France), Express Scopelitis by Emilia Milou (Greece/UK), Lady Time [+see also:
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by Elina Talvensaari (Finland), The Marriage Project [+see also:
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by Atieh Attarzadeh Firozabad and Hesam Eslami (Iran/France), The Pace of Water by Antonio Di Biase (Italy), Self Portrait [+see also:
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by Katja Hogset, Margreth Olin and Espen Wallkin (Norway), Spiros and the Circle of Death by Dimitrios Kafidas and Lino Kafidas (Greece/Belgium), Sundays by Alethea Avramis (Greece/France), Walchensee Forever [+see also:
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by Janna Ji Wonders (Germany), and Zumiriki [+see also:
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interview: Oskar Alegría
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by Oskar Alegria (Spain).

The third international competitive section is >>Film Forward, in which nine films will partake, while eight more documentaries are featured out of competition. Some of the docs are Birds (Or How to Be One) [+see also:
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by Babis Makridis (Greece), Days of Cannibalism [+see also:
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interview: Teboho Edkins
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by Teboho Edkins (France/South Africa/Netherlands), The House of Love [+see also:
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by Luca Ferri (Italy), The Metamorphosis of Birds [+see also:
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interview: Catarina Vasconcelos
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by Catarina Vasconcelos (Portugal), Ouvertures [+see also:
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interview: Louis Henderson
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by Olivier Marboeuf and Louis Henderson (UK/France), and The Year of the Discovery [+see also:
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by Luis Lopez Carrasco (Spain).

As always, there will be a special focus on Greek documentaries, and a total of 77 productions have been selected in various sections, including the international competitions.

Regarding the tributes organised by the TDF, one of them is dedicated to animated documentaries, a hybrid subgenre that is evolving very rapidly, and as part of the Anthropocene Epoch tribute, various geological, environmental, social, philosophical, political and cultural aspects will be explored, while memes will be examined through a special batch of documentaries.

Finally, a series of live, open discussions will be streamed on Thessaloniki’s YouTube channel, including a talk with renowned war correspondent Robert Fisk, the protagonist of the documentary This Is Not a Movie [+see also:
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, as well as the film’s director, Yung Chang (21 May), while memes will be explored on 27 May by Matthias Fritsch, the director of The Story of the Technoviking, the vice-president of the Greek National Commission for Human Rights (GNCHR), Yiannis Ioannidis, and The Real Ancient Memes.

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