27th Panorama of European Cinema Festival

The 27th edition of the Panorama of European cinema took place from October 16th to October 26th. The Festival is located in the famous capital of Greece, the “ground zero” of Western civilization. In Athens everything has either deeper or higher meaning, including films.

The concept of the festival is the presentation of contemporary European cinema (or cinemas). The Director of Panorama of European Cinema is Ninos Feneck Mikelides. In his introduction he emphasized: “Panorama returns again with a rich program of films from Greece and all around Europe — which remains the main focus of the festival — but also selected features from the rest of the world”.

The 27th edition screened over 50 feature films and documentary titles, as well as a number of short films. There were several sections of the program: International Competition Section; World Cinema Premieres; The anti-conformist of the Greek cinema; The lonesome Piere Etaix; Tribute to Elia Suleiman; WWI: The war to end all wars…

The section ‘8 Greek directors propose their favorite European film’, presented an interesting insight into the European influences of contemporary Greek directors: including Last Year in Marienbad (L’annee derniere a Marienbad) by Alain Resnais, Lola by Jacques Demy, The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (Moartea domnului Lazarescu) by Cristi Puiu, My Name is Joe by Ken Loach, Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom (Salo o le 120 giornate di Sodoma) by Pier Paolo Pasolini (the choice of Alexandros Avranas)… Palestinian film director Elia Suleiman and British film writer Paul Laverty also visited Athens to present their work and give master classes on the art of cinema. (Dragan Jurak)

Panorama of European Cinema Festival: www.mifpanorama.com