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Browse through the detailed list of the screening films of the 1st Santorini Film Festival edition and explore our diverse programme.
Ainhoa
Ainhoa is 9 years old and she has left home, bringing only her school bag and a Playmobil.
Ivan Sainz-Pardo
Blind-Sighted
A failed young athlete loses her sight after an operation. In a desperate attempt to get her life back on track, she teams up and falls in love with a disfigured guide runner who helps her try to qualify for the national blind running team.
Clearing
Gust, an imaginative ten-year-old boy goes to meet his stepmother’s family for the first time. He is the only child other than his baby brother, who gets all the attention whilst Gust gets left behind to occupy himself with his imagination. At the family meeting Gust meets his aunt Vera. Just like Gust, Vera experiences the meeting from a distance and soon it becomes clear that she doesn’t function like the rest of the family. Though she tries hard to be accepted in the same way as her younger and more successful sister Nathalie. The adults treat Vera like a child but with his fanciful and unprejudiced view, Gust gets interested and fascinated by her. When Vera desperately runs away after yet another incident, Gust decides to follow her into the woods, where he finds her standing in a lake. They become aware of each other and the connection they share and decide to wait in the woods together as the family party carries on without them.
Margo Mot
Death Of Albine
‘Death of Albine’ is a collaborative film project between award-winning film director Mike Sharpe and British Installation Artist Rebecca Louise Law, inspired by elements of the French novel ‘The Sinful Priest’, by Emile Zola. The music and sound design for the film was created by Echoic Audio in Bristol. The music starts slowly with mournful tones and builds into more music realms and finally thrusting into a full orchestral string score. The slow build to this moment was intentional. As the character's central motive is death we wanted to create a sense of transition and also elation at this beautiful moment.
Mike Sharpe
fiSOlofia
Three retired friends love to talk in a bar in their country. They do not talk about politics, sports or local gossip but are questioning on philosophical themes that will bring them to life in an animated way. The flashbacks of a more erudite narrator than others will open up surreal moments that trigger these new questions. Between doubts and certainties, between faith and reason, friends will reflect on the fundamental questions of existence.
Nicola Palmeri
Funny Story
After years of being a neglectful father, a womanizing TV star decides to crash his estranged daughter’s vacation in Big Sur.
Michael Gallagher
Gaslighting
The short film is about a dangerous form of manipulation. Gaslighting means one person overpowers another by manipulating their perception – through unsettling lies, flustering projection and constant guilt-shaming. Such mental and emotional abuse keeps the victim confused and conditioned on the gaslighter. At the end the protagonist emancipates from the toxic relationship in a surprising way.
Tina Matzat
Goat on a Scooter
Illustrator is filmed drawing Goat on a Scooter which then drives off.
Louis Benoit, Chermagne Barnachea
Happy First Birthday Lucretia
One family's attempt to bury their beloved dog, Stuart, all together.
Natalie Novak Remplakowski
Heimlich
Heimlich is homely. Paris lives in an unhomely home. Serena wants a home, in a place you wouldn’t exactly call Paris. They drink. They talk. They merge. In water, beer and memory. A frog leaps. Strange. Stranger. Unhomely. Unheimlich. Stranger than home.
Kostas Bakouris
KCPK – The End
The cinematic video is capturing a teenage girl's worst nightmare through adolescent angst, bathed in underlying sexual tension, and depicts the inevitable end of youth and purity.
Loïc Andrieu
Little Fiel
Artist Fiel dos Santos grew up during the 16-year-long civil war in his home country of Mozambique. The only one of his family to never have shot a gun, today he makes art out of guns to commemorate the lives lost.
Irina Patkanian
Maria’s Silence
This film is based on documentary material but is not, strictly speaking, a documentary film. Nor it is a work of fiction. The film rather appeared to us like a dream, not a nocturnal dream, but one which unfolded day by day while shooting. A dream shared between the photographer-director and the actress (or, better, the woman portrayed in the feature), which nevertheless seemed to follow its own, enigmatic necessity through which the daily shots joined almost magnetically, interweaving in a pattern of superimposed layers that unceasingly merge and dissolve one in another, in the constant flux, crystallization and reshaping of psychic interior. At a certain point, this dream seems to end but in fact it only opens up to another dream, or hallucination, where the film itself abruptly starts to burn, unleashing new and old visions – fragments of reality – until it is put out by a sudden storm and dissolves in a twilight of sea-waters. In this sense, the film is also a meditation on the elements, Water and Fire, Wind, Earth and Skin, inspired by a Sun-Eye that appeared almost by itself in one of the first shots and took possession of the narration, in the endless flow and unfathomable metamorphosis of all things and beings.
Cesare Bedogne
Memories of a Doll
In the midst of the Greek Genocide in early 1920s, a young girl sacrifices her childhood in order to protect her younger siblings.
Michail Charalampidis
More Than One Way
A woman falls to Earth and builds up an appetite while exploring the abandoned planet on a skateboard she controls with her mind.
Joseph Armario
My Brothers
Eddy and Rocco are brothers. Their hour of glory on the indie rock scene was in the late 90s. Ten years later, they live on an island and lead the local marching band. One evening their sister Lola comes back into their lives. She meets Simon, Rocco's son, who will be 13 years old soon. Their common history bears more than its fair share of suffering, with broken hearts, bruised bodies and inability to communicate. But the strength of brotherhood will bring joy back into their lives.
Guerry Bertrand
Never Been Closer
A group of young people meet one summer evening and drink beer together. Filip is new to the group and when the conversation moves to sex and relationships, he is forced to admit he is both a virgin and has never kissed anyone before. Will he be pushed over the sexual barrier?
Rasmus Lodenius
Nour
When fifteen-year-old Nour is forced to marry Maurice whom she despises, her carefree summer days morph into claustrophobic confinement and household chores. Nour mourns her lost childhood and scattered dreams.
Khalil Dreyfus Zaarour
Personas Non Grata
An international performance art group changes the lives of their members and audience through their radical underground shows. Personas Non Grata is a proof of concept for the feature length documentary Academia Non Grata.
Alvin Adadevoh, Amber Lee
Reflections
In a society close to our own, where the poor take an important role in the equilibrium of the community, Leria, a young woman in need is passing a job interview.
Florent Agostini
Remake of a Summer
During a summer in Paris and it’s suburbs, two young directors attempt a remake of "Chroniques d’un été", fifty years after the cult film of Rouch and Morin. An offbeat portrait of nowday's youth, as a mirror image of the 1960s, while questions of the “cinéma vérité” is revisited with fancy.
Bragard Magali, Enjolras Séverine
Scent of the Stars
Nino, out of the madhouse after thirty years, finds himself incapable of living otherwise. Just as Adriano, a hospital doctor, shot home from his wife and also unable to find the courage to face life. They all will find the meaning of small things again
Francesco Felli
Spectrum
Deni, Nana, Anna: three completely different personalities, bring out the multifaceted issues of gender identity's acceptance by the Greek society and legislation, through their own personal stories. The documentary explains the meaning of gender identity which is largely unknown by the society and depicts the internal conflicts of the protagonists as well as the challenges they face in their surroundings. All these as part of today's reality in Greece. Greece of crisis… of values.
Papaioannou Ioanna , Tegou Dione, Tsalkitzoglou Dimitra, Kalliontzi Hara
Te Absolvo
Two men trapped in their roles. A young priest arrives in a small town, on the hills of Monferrato, to take the place of the old parish priest who, despite being suspended in divinis and abandoned by his parish community, does not want to go, wants to continue being a priest and his priestly activity. The film brings the two protagonists to the center of the eternal conflict between the law and their own conscience. Two priests, one young and one elderly, two figures set as icons in the traditional and popular imagery in search of an absolution capable of sedating the senses of guilt. Cultural Interest Film recognizes by Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism . General Cinema Direction
Carlo Benso
The Dream Hatcher
An experimental short about the interpretation of dream hatching and symbol of captivity and entrapment.
Mel Hsieh
The Iron Orchard
The year is 1939. Europe prepares for war, while the United States slowly overcomes the trauma of the Great Depression. Young and ambitious, Jim McNeely arrives in Texas – a state gushing with oil and filled with the bodies and broken minds of men who once dreamt of riches. Jim has something to prove to all the parents of pretty girls who refuse to let their daughters marry boys from lower classes. His Texan adventure initially consists of blood, sweat, and tears in addition to long working hours in scorching sun and cold nights being insulted by fellow workers. But Jim seems to have what it takes to get to the top of the oil chain and conquer this brave new world of tough, relentless men and beautiful women who will do everything in their power not to become merely trophy wives. On his way up, Jim meets a wide variety of people – including at least several types of righteous men, eccentrics, and scumbags – who came to this unwelcoming land, tarnished with unfulfilled plans and dreams, for the same thing he did.
Ty Roberts
The Salt Box
An elderly gentleman tells a story to a four year old boy about the Civil War. He tells it with such detail and clarity, it almost sounds as if he was there. Thomas, a Union soldier, is shot by a blue-eyed, fiery redhead, Mary, for reasons she believes are just. As Thomas works her farm in shackles, he challenges Mary about the war, and in particular, the inhumanity of slavery. They butt heads over and over. And their distaste for each other rarely decelerates. But after working together for months, their bitter rivalry slowly manifests into true, unadulterated, love. And just as they realize their affection, Confederate horse soldiers arrive and take him to prison. Andersonville! What happens next, only true love could recognize!
Yia Yia: A Portrait
Between 1939 and 1945, an estimated 40.5 million Europeans were uprooted and displaced… This is the story of 1 of them. "Yia Yia: A Portrait" documents the life and times of "Yia Yia" Mary Vorgia, as told by herself. From a youth spent in the sleepy mountains of Peloponnesus, to her sudden exodus to a land called Manhattan, Yia Yia reflects upon her life's journey, one both familiar and unique. For before she was Yia Yia, or even Mary, she was Maria, one of the millions of mid-20th century Europeans to have had their lives interrupted by the encroaching forces of World War II. What follows is one woman's odyssey, spanning much time and many places, to reclaim her lost innocence, heal an enduring trauma, and grow a family of her own. (English, 20 min.)
Greg Sego