Hronis Theoharis

For a long time, vessels crossing the High Risk Area on the Somali coastline would hire private mercenaries in order to protect themselves from pirates. Nowadays, the attacks have dropped off and the mercenaries encounter a new problem: the lack of action. Daily training to face a non-existent enemy creates a sense of absurdity, captured by Gregoris Rentisʼ camera with great inspiration and precision.

Karim Asir, the Afghan Charlie Chaplin, in the midst of bombs and disasters, gives performances using laughter as his only weapon. When the Taliban takeover, Karim is threatened with death. After a series of adversities, he manages to arrive in Greece. We follow his life adventure, and through his story, we explore the issue of laughter – in Afghanistan and beyond.

Jasim and Alsaleh are underage refugees in a Greek prison. Coming from Syria and Iraq, they were arrested and accused of smuggling illegal immigrants. With unique access in the juvenile prison and court room, the film follows the two friends closely while in custody, during the trial and after the verdict, through a narrative of suspense which reveals how youngsters are forced to transport migrants across the border to Greece while the smugglers stay behind and continue their job uninterrupted. If Jasim and Alsaleh are found guilty, they will face extremely long prison sentences. Phone conversations between the imprisoned young boys and their mothers at their war-stricken countries accentuate the double enclosure that these families experience. No one knows how and when their long run will end.

Zakros, a tiny dot in the map of Eastern Crete, bathed in sunlight and harnessed by the wind. Fading glances and attempts to wonder in the labyrinths of time, history, memory and daily life.

A documentary short that explores the distortion of memory in old age, this film follows a man as he retraces the important moments of his life. As he enters his final chapter, it becomes clear that he can no longer separate reality from what he has dreamed of.

After the directors' mother's death, he returns to his empty childhood apartment to handle a troubled inheritance. As he navigates its spaces, fragments of memories resurface, entwining the past with the Greek Junta's collective trauma.

Loxandra, a girl with Down syndrome, is invited to participate in the new production at the main stage of the National Theatre of Greece. Her mother decides to accept the invitation for her daughter’s own good. Loxandra will fight hard to meet the demands of the new reality.

How to resist? What sort of action to adopt against Nazism, fascism and the extreme right? Can Democracy still eradicate them once and for all without bending its own principles? How to fight back? Is the solution to be given by the courts? A political blockade from all political parties? A media boycott? Raising social awareness? A better education in school? Or is it a more physical resistance? A trial all the more important than the one of Nurenberg is the backbone of this documentary.

Between heaven and earth, between theories about the creation of the world and an advanced pregnancy, a couple takes a walk in the National Garden. The woman lies down, closes her eyes and the adventure begins. How will she give birth? Will the man have time to attend the birth? Life is full of adversities and everyday life poses obstacles, sometimes logical and sometimes irrational. And there is no respite - only for a short while: In the Garden!

Two high school students, constantly seeking their identity through violence, will inevitably test each other's boundaries.

Our coincidental meeting with the writer’s granddaughter sparked our interest in a cardboard box. Inside it there was a treasure of old letters, newspaper clippings, personal documents, and half a dozen canisters of super 8mm film. Fifty years after his passing, his granddaughter Christina shares with us Stratis Myrivilis’s poetic inner world.

An integral part of Greek folklore, Manolis Glezos is best known as the man who tore the swastika flag from the Acropolis during the Nazi invasion in 1941. Since then he has lived a mercurial existence; often caught between moments of glory and controversy as he continued to battle for his ideals. With the country knee-deep in a crushing financial crisis, Glezos is back in the limelight, elected as the oldest member of the European Parliament in 2014, at the age of 92. Yet he won't even discuss "the flag incident" refusing to be pigeonholed as a one-hit-wonder. Scolding, lecturing and joking along the way, he develops a tug-of-war relationship with the filmmakers, as they uncover the man behind the myth.

Two sisters have lost their father during the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974. When they learn that there are chances he might be still alive, they travel to Turkey to search for him.

A real estate agent who is interested in investing wanders around the area of Neos Kosmos in Athens, formerly known as Dourgouti. Through his eyes unfolds the past, present, and uncertain future of this once degraded district. A district resembling a deserted island, right next to Acropolis, following the fate of similar areas around the globe.

Playing with Fire is a documentary about the actresses in Afghanistan who are courageous enough to be involved with theater arts and find themselves facing harsh criticism, social disapproval and even threats about their lives and the lives of their families. Acting has even caused a girl's death in Kabul and many young actresses have been forced to flee the country. Anneta Papathanassou, actress and director from Greece, visits Kabul to teach ancient Greek theater and record the lives of Afghan artists, who try to combine art and culture under very difficult circumstances in this troubled country.

Athens 2020. Quarantine days. Daphne, a young singer, decides to break down the wall that separates her from her annoying neighbor.

In the rehabilitation unit of an Athenian trauma hospital, victims of serious accidents struggle to walk again… or at least return to an autonomous existence. Divided between hope and acceptance, they offer us a glimpse into the depths of human condition.

Kaiti Drosou (1922-2016), poet and journalist, was known for her intense resistance activity during the Occupation, where she also met her husband, writer Aris Alexandrou. Her life, which was connected to important historical events (Occupation, Civil War, exiles), is reflected in her poetry, with honesty and an anti-heroic perspective. She died in Paris in 2016.

'Europe, the Dream' is a documentary about three adolescents who are/were living in Patras, Greece: Andreas, a young Greek, Ali Reza, a refugee from Afghanistan and Abdulla, a refugee from Syria; they are each dreaming of a great journey to Europe, and, with all their hopes and fears, they are struggling to make this happen as they see it as the only solution for their lives. They don't consider Greece as Europe! The two refugees have in fact managed to reach their destinations: Ali Reza in Sweden and Abdulla in Austria. Andreas is still in Greece. He wants to study and work but his family has day to day problems which have been heightened by the Greek financial crisis. Will these three young men be able to realize their dreams or these dreams will be thwarted by the difficulties and complexities that exist in today's Europe.

The documentary follows the daily routine of stray dogs struggling in the center of Athens and the people who take care of them, in the course of five years. A hidden world emerges from the routes of these unknown Athenians, unveiling the unexpected face and the heart of Athens in the midst of change.

A documentary about Eleusina. The past and the present, in complete antithesis, coexist in a place spoiled by modern industry but which long ago hosted the Eleusinian Mysteries, the secret ceremonies that initiated the ancient Greeks into the miracles of life, death and the afterlife.

Vanessa seeks to find herself in the face of goals as high as the mountains that stand before her. She tries to give meaning to her mountaineering expeditions by promoting her ecological concerns and social media identity. Her roles are multiple, making matters even more complicated as what is at stake becomes difficult to balance.

A documentary about cinema censorship during the dictatorship in Greece (1967- 1974), based on never-before-seen state archives. The film includes clips of films which were either censored or banned, newsreels of that era, interviews with famous directors and also secret documents from the reports of the Censorship Committee that are made public for the first time, portraying a revealing picture of the system’s control mechanisms and providing a fresco of that time.

On the rising side of the African continent, the last remnants of the once mighty human species lie forgotten. In the region from which they took their first steps, all that remains are fragments of memories saved as an archive by the last of their kind. In a final attempt to preserve their story, they left behind a cautionary tale for future species. Human Fiction examines humans after their own extinction.