Theo Angelopoulos

A film director, his relationships with women and the expression of his bitterly emotions about cinema and Greece

Eleven major film makers from Europe, America and Asia talk about Akira Kurosawa and discover surprising influences on their own work.

At the 60th anniversary of Cannes Film Festival, 34 famous directors are followed by camera.

A history of the Cannes Film Festival's Director's Fortnight selection.

A documentary that focuses on Abbas Kiarostami's cinematic philosophy talking to himself and other figures, and also seeks the opinion about his works both inside and outside his homeland.

A journey through history

Theo Angelopoulos recalls the defining moment in 1964 that led to him to live his entire life in Greece, and explores the concept of borders in his work - as the limits of existence, of life and death, of language and communication. “Narrowing down the borders narrows the communication, stretches the differences, magnifies oppositions, magnifies reasons for war, magnifies the refugees, magnifies the internal exile... In reality a civil war leaves behind wounds which cannot easily be healed and they revive, like ghosts, or like recurrent nightmares, during the long nights which have dogged Greek society for years.”

As Yorgos Papalios trains for the Athens Marathon, his remarkable life unfolds – from shipping dynasties and revolutionary Cuba to the shaping of Greek cinema and cultural policy – revealing a personal journey that echoes the modern history of Greece.

An approach to the phenomenon of Thanasis Vengos, the man and the artist, through film excerpts, testimonies of his collaborators and relatives and analyses of his symbolic role in the post-war modern Greek reality. Thanasis Vengos, for more than fifty years, was one of the most important actors in Greece. His films and lines are written in history, raising more than three generations of Greeks.

A Greek strongman seduces a young tourist and spend the day with her. "Jimmis the Tiger" is a family sportsman, who makes a living by showing off his skills in impromptu "shows" on the streets of Athens. One day a young German woman approaches him and asks his permission to take a series of photographs for a report. A tenderness will develop between them and they will spend a night together in a hotel room. The next morning, Tzimis will find himself accused of seducing the young foreigner to rob her...

A doc made during the nightmarish filming of The Suspended Step of the Stork at Florina.

A City Runs Through the Festival is an anatomy of the Festival through the eyes of its own audience.

An immigrant returns to his village after many years, only to find that no one is waiting for him. When his wife and her lover murder him, an investigator attempts to reconstruct the crime, while a film crew documents the event.

Greek Theo Angelopoulos traveling from Athens to Ostia, the Roman beach where Pasolini was killed. Far from there, in a Spanish train station, Víctor Erice wanders in an interview about the film resistance. And in Italy, Tonino Guerra, Ninetto Davoli and Nico Naldini lend his voice to the missing Passolini to close a historic triangle on film and solitude.

A documentary about cinema censorship during the dictatorship in Greece (1967- 1974), based on never-before-seen state archives. The film includes clips of films which were either censored or banned, newsreels of that era, interviews with famous directors and also secret documents from the reports of the Censorship Committee that are made public for the first time, portraying a revealing picture of the system’s control mechanisms and providing a fresco of that time.

Three young people have decided to rob the safe of the estate agent Thomas Christidis, whose office is in the center of Athens. The first of them is Ntinos, who is Christidis’ clerk, the second one is Stavros, Ntinos’ younger brother who works as a book representative, while their friend Michalis is a pirate taxi-driver. The robbery is successful, and they feel excited.

Portrait of Greek director Theo Angelopoulos.

A comic tale. The issue of film education has been a Gordian link for many years in Greece. Starting from the time of Stavrakos in 1950, the documentary reaches up to the present day, exploring this issue through a dialogue between the people who dealt and are dealing. Among them Theodoros Angelopoulos, Pantelis Voulgaris, Dinos Katsouridis, Nikos Koundouros, Manos Zacharias, Werner Herzog, Emir Kustouritsa, Fatih Akin.

Documentary that recounts the ups and downs of the shooting of Eternity and a Day (1998), focusing on the exhaustive preparation of the shot-sequence that closes the film, and the peculiar way in which Theo Angelopoulos works with his technical team and actors.

In the mid-80s, Aegokeros publishing house intended to publish a magazine about film and the theater. Theo Angelopoulos and Nikos Panayotopoulos had been chosen by the editorial board for the first issue. A summer evening at Angelopoulos house in the Mati area, Antonis Kokkinos and Yannis Soldatos recorded a three-hour interview between Theo and Nikos, within the frameworks set for them, in order to be included in the magazine. The interview brought to the fore their common course, even though completely opposite from one point onward. Thirty-five years later, the unpublished conversation has been found; both the tapes and the transcripts! This conversation stands as a valuable manifestation of the creators’ views regarding their own, until then, existing and future work, as well as a thorough insight into the New Greek Cinema, and into World Cinema in general.

Michel Demopoulos directed only one film in his life: a documentary about the shooting of Theo Angelopoulos’ O Thiasos / The Travelling Players (1975).

Athens 1967. The political assassinations and the background between the government and foreign powers, on the occasion of the "Polk Case", where an innocent leftist was convicted for the murder of an American journalist in Greece.

About Angelopoulos and Chillida.

An actress who shone during the "golden age" of Greek cinema now lives far from the limelight, almost isolated, with only a few friends for company. Her decision to return to the stage, following a proposal from an old colleague, will bring her into contact with younger people, but also with ghosts from the past that haunt her, prompting her to reevaluate her attitude toward her desires and life.

A deeply personal look at the life of Greek filmmaker Theo Angelopoulos, one of the foremost representatives of Greek cinema. His life reflects the tragedies faced by an entire nation during the oppressive era of military dictatorship. It is a story of boundless ambitions, hope, love and the responsibilities that haunt every artist, even after death.

An interview with Japanese writer and poet Natsuki Ikezawa at Angelopoulos' home in Greece.