Athens picked as city of honor at Toronto
- Canada’s fest to feature Greek capital in its City to City section, showcasing two world debuts among its ten screenings
Yiannis Sakaridis’ Wild Duck (photo) and Yiorgos Servetas’ Standing Aside Watching will have their world premiere in one of the world’s leading film forums this fall, having been picked among the ten entries to be featured in Toronto’s City to City programme, which this year shines its spotlight on Athens.
Following Buenos Aires, Constantinople and Mumbai, Athens and its struggling film production will have a chance to awe audiences overseas, hoping to haul in international interest and production funds to help the flailing industry.
Sakaridis’ Wild Duck follows a telecommunications engineer who sees his business crash, before picking up a colleague’s efforts to untangle an eavesdropping scandal.
“A film about the choices we make when facing moral dilemmas”, is what Wild Duck is for Sakaridis, who found it “imperative to express myself as a director within the artistic outburst occurring during the current social and economic upheaval”.
Standing Aside, Watching, is a young woman’s struggle to elbow her way into a confined small-town society, a story that taps into the recent phenomenon of young Greeks abandoning city-life and flowing back to suburbia in hopes of a viable future.
“There was no better way to tell this story than through the epic viewpoint of a spaghetti western”, says director Yiorgos Servetas, who sees his heroine “transcend herself when faced with violence, prejudice and a communal vow of silence”.
Alexandros Avranas’s Venice contender Miss Violence [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Alexandros Avranas
film profile] (news) will also be featured in Toronto, as will Rotterdam screened Wasted Youth, Tokyo opener JACE, San Sebastian awarded Unfair World, Karlovy Vary screened September, Berlin screened The Daughter [+see also:
trailer
film profile] and The Eternal Return of Antonis Paraskevas [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Elina Psykou
film profile], and Thessaloniki Doc Fest contender To the Wolf.
Did you enjoy reading this article? Please subscribe to our newsletter to receive more stories like this directly in your inbox.
