22/10/2013 - Dimitris Bavella’s feature debut secures spot at main selection, while Christina Koutsospyrou and Aran Hughes’ film lands in docu-section.

Having premiered at the competition section of the Sarajevo Film Festival, where it was greeted as an inventive twist on the after-effects of Greece’s economic and social meltdown, Dimitris Bavellas’ feature debut Runaway Day [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (photo) will be featured at the main selection of the Austrian capital’s film festival Viennale (October 24 - November 6).

Featuring celebrated actors Maria Skoula, Makis Papadimitriou and Erricos Litsis, Runaway Day follows Maria (Skoula) and Loukas (Papadimitriou) as two unrelated characters who are being crushed by their every-day problems. As a result, the two of them start wandering around Athens, indulging in various illegalities, all the while being unaware that shady characters are trying to track them down for mysterious reasons.

Shot in black and white and implementing identifiable B-movie motifs, the film seeks to “depict the desperation shared by Greeks in modern-day Athens, a city collapsing under deep decay,” says Bavellas, who goes on to note that “Athenians are feeling an on-going, suffocating pressure, which pushes them to abandon the city en-masse, a pandemic sort of escape towards a destination unknown”.

Meanwhile, Berlinale-premiered and Thessaloniki Doc Fest contender To The Wolf [+see also:
trailer
film profile], a Greek-British coproduction by Christina Koutsospyrou and Aran Hughes, will be screening at the documentary section of the Viennale, after being featured in Toronto fest’s City to City program a few months back. The documentary follows the lives of two shepherd families struggling to survive in an all but deserted remote village high up in the Korinthian Mountains.