11/08/2025 - Spanish helmer Miguel Ángel Jiménez stages a birthday extravaganza led by Willem Dafoe and based on Greek writer Panos Karnezis’s eponymous novel

Lobsters, champagne and a sumptuous birthday cake set the scene for The Birthday Party, the new film by Spanish director Miguel Ángel Jiménez, which has had its world premiere as part of Locarno’s Piazza Grande selection. Shipping magnate Marcos Timoleon (Willem Dafoe) starts his morning with a naked stretch and a glass of whiskey, neat, welcoming a very special day: his daughter’s 25th birthday. With this degree of opulence and guests docking at the private (Greek) island, the audience has learned to expect the worst of them, and early on in the film, it becomes apparent that Marcos has two love languages: plotting and manipulation.

The Birthday Party is based on Greek writer Panos Karnezis’s eponymous novel from 2007, which gives a lot more insight into Timoleon’s life and rise to prominence through flashbacks, tearing the reader out of the book’s present tense. The film also takes place during a single summer’s day in 1975, but unlike its primary source, it manages to organically weave more of those backstories into the dialogue. From throwaway comments to short monologues, the script, co-written by Jiménez, Giorgos Karnavas and Nicos Panagiotopoulos, includes just enough past events to paint Timoleon as a ruthless man of yearning; perhaps even an idealist who believes he can buy and control people, and coerce them into loving him.

This is, in fact, the reason why he has thrown the birthday party – to make sure he can preside over his daughter Sofia’s (Vic Carmen Sonne) future. In the background, Sofia has started a love affair with a British journalist (Joe Cole) and plans to use the fruits of their union to bargain for her freedom. If we strip away its lavish décor – courtesy of production designer Myrte Beltman, who worked on Sweet Dreams [+see also:
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Miguel Ángel Jiménez is a Spanish director by blood, but his features are a prime example of what a “European” film is today. While the 2007 novel didn’t need labels of national belonging to identify as “Greek” precisely, European cinema of the 2020s benefits from them, especially in the form of international co-productions, and this film is no exception. The cast is multi-national, and so are the characters; their accents are kept, alluding to backstories the audience will never fully learn, since they are all men and women of the world – even the spies, the maids and the bodyguards. On a stylistic note, The Birthday Party is made to look kitsch in the most inspiring kind of way – not to mention the appearance of a unicorn at a pivotal moment – but still be inclusive. The movie does struggle to shift between the micro and the macro lens oftentimes, but it leaves an impression of a most powerful imagination at work: it’s a pan-European fever dream, with Willem Dafoe as an honorary guest.

The Birthday Party was produced by Heretic (Greece), in co-production with Spain’s Fasten Films, Lemming Film (Netherlands) and Raucous Pictures (UK), with Heretic and Bankside Films handling its world sales.