Katerina Evangelakou’s film wins six State Quality Awards

Penny Panayiotopoulou comes in a close second for Best Film

By Maria Katsounaki and Panayiotis Panagopoulos - Kathimerini

Female directors set the tone at Monday’s Ministry of Culture-sponsored State Quality Awards ceremony in Thessaloniki. By just one vote, Katerina Evangelakou (97 votes) seized the top prize from Penny Panayiotopoulou, walking away with the prize for Best Feature Film (worth 58,700 euros) as well as another five awards for her film “Think it Over.”

The work is a tender social comedy about the life, passions and paradoxical choices of a 40-year-old woman living in the Greek countryside. The film won over the audience and the 50-member jury with its humor, focus and narrative clarity.

By a hair’s breadth, Panayiotopoulou received the second prize for the best feature film (44,025 euros) and the Best New Director award (14,675 euros) for her entry, “Hard Goodbyes: My Father,” an incisive, complex yet direct look on the theme of loss and mourning. “The King,” a Greek western-style film based on a true story about a former convict trying to rebuild his life in a remote village, won the established director Nikos Grammatikos the third award for a feature film (29,350 euros).

“Think it Over” also received award for the Best Screenplay (14,675 euros), Best Lead Actress (for Mania Papadimitriou), Best Supporting Actress (for Yvonni Maltezou), Best Director (Katerina Evangelakou shared this 29,350-euro prize with Nikos Nikolaidis for his entry “Loser Takes All”) and Best Make-Up.

The Best Lead Actor award went to Vangelis Mourikis for his role in “The King,” which was well deserved, while Minas Hadzisavvas won Best Supporting Actor for his role in Rovertos Mathioulis’s “Lilly’s Story,” a film about Greeks in self-exile in Paris after the 1967 military coup in Greece.

The First Prize for a Documentary or Animated Feature Film (17,610 euros) went to Yiannis Leondaris’s “A Tribute to Slowness,” while the second prize (11,740 euros) in the same category went to Vassilis Mazomenos’s “Remembrance.”

Costis Gikas won the award for Best Photography (8,805 euros) for the mysterious film noir “Loser Takes All,” while the Best Set Design award (5,870 euros) went to Aglaia Zioopoulou for “The King.”

Nikos Mamangakis received the award for Best Music for “Lilly’s Story;” Antonis Samaras was voted Best Sound Man for “The King;” Alexis Pezas got the prize for editing for Stella Theodorakis’s “Close... So Close,” and Miranda Theodoridou and Agne Doutsi shared the prize for Best Costume for their work on the historical drama by Maria Iliou, “Alexandria.”