10/09/2026 - VENICE 2026: Jacqueline Lentzou’s bold sophomore feature recounts a Greek middle-schooler’s day that ends in tragedy, leading to a beautifully rendered journey into the spirit world

Anastasia Gouliamou and Evita Andriopoulou in A Day in the Life of Jo: Chapter Phaedra

The main bulk of A Day in the Life of Jo: Chapter Phaedra would be marked by its narrative ordinariness, if not for a prologue set in an amorphous spirit world – a setting that basically bookends the movie. Over beautifully shot blue-filtered light and shadows, we hear a disembodied voice speak about sending a “dream” to our protagonist, Jo (Evita Andriopoulou), alongside three hard-to-see plastic objects that suddenly appear dead-centre in the frame, like phenomena from a less dread-inducing version of Twin Peaks’ Black Lodge. One of the most visually and formally accomplished works premiering in this year’s Venice Orizzonti competition, Jacqueline Lentzou’s sophomore feature still can’t evade certain coming-of-age movie tropes, but it distinguishes itself with several dazzling passages that move it close to avant-garde and experimental cinema.

One of Lentzou’s main inspirations was the 2008 murder by the Athens police of Alexandros Grigoropoulos, which resulted in a wave of protests that made a strong impression on her in a key phase of her life. The resulting film is very much an indirect response to this, with 15-year-old Jo as the character the script follows through a series of ostensibly ordinary, but still deeply charged, events, alongside interactions with her divorced parents (her choreographer and dancer mother Eleni, played by Eleni Vergeti, and Ektoras Lygizos as the dad) and her skeezy boyfriend, Alexis.

The afterlife prologue is striking enough, but as Lentzou and DoP Grimm Vandekerckhove initially introduce the middle-class suburban milieu in a succession of long-duration aerial tracking shots, it’s clear we’re in for a film more sensitised to image-making and mise-en-scène for its own sake, lit with hyperreal colours that also act as a pathway to the characters’ inner lives. As we learn Jo’s eventual fate – prefigured by a brief shot of a vehicle full of armed police, who are all slurping down Frappuccinos – the sequences leading up to this gain a particular charge in hindsight, with extended scenes set to music, such as Vashti Bunyan and the sprechgesang Scottish indie band Life Without Buildings, bespeaking her taste, and even self-image, coming into its own, away from the trap beats that her boyfriend and his mates – who are implied to already be using drugs – prefer. The crucial song is one performed in a music lesson, in oddly professional style, by one Phaedra (Anastasia Gouliamou): a traditional piece for soprano entitled “The Rose Tattoo”, to match her own ornately designed, red jumper. As a figure even more unreal compared to everything we see, was her presence sent by the spirits heard at the beginning? And might it help unearth Jo’s unfulfilled queer desire?

Whilst being very true to Lentzou’s own beliefs and fascinations, there’s something still quite amorphous about how she deploys mystical concepts such as the zodiac and tarot; for viewers not on her wavelength, there’s an aura of preciousness, not least in a late scene, where a group of spirits – represented by shifting beams of white light – converse solely in open captions, recalling the conversation between rocks in the Oscar winner Everything Everywhere All at Once. Yet, with the scenes propelled by Colin Stetson’s drone-heavy original score, we’re ultimately convinced how Lentzou’s vision of potential eternity rescues Jo – and Alexandros – from the sudden impact of death.

A Day in the Life of Jo: Chapter Phaedra is a co-production by Greece, Germany and France, staged by Avion Films and Atalante, alongside Kelek Film, 4 à 4 Productions, ERT and Haris & Co. Its international sales are handled by Lucky Number.