New crop of Greek films to open at local movie theaters
After the success of Penny Panayiotopoulou’s film «Hard Goodbyes: My Father» – which sold over 10,000 tickets in its first week at the box office – fans of Greek cinema can look forward to the screening of three new selections over the next few weeks. Kicking off on Friday is «Third Night,» a psychological thriller by Dimitris Panayiotatos, starring Minas Hadzisavvas, Dimitra Hatoupi, Christina Theodoropoulou and Katerina Tsavalou. The film relates the three tortuous days of four women – a 16-year-old girl and her mother, a woman who has recently had a baby and another girl, waiting for her boyfriend – as they await news about an airplane that has gone off radar and become lost. Veteran director Nikos Nikolaidis’s film noir, «Loser Takes All,» opens on January 31 with a cast starring former rock-band Trypes frontman Yiannis Angelakas (who also wrote the soundtrack), Iphigenia Asteriadi, Jenny Kitseli and Simon Nikolaidis. Returning to the style of earlier films such as «The Thrushes are Still Singing» and «Sweet Bunch,» Nikolaidis uses thriller suspense and a noir aesthetic to bring together a group of misfits, lead by The Man, who try to score big on a drug deal. Last, but not least, February will feature Katerina Evangelakou’s «Think it Over,» a film which received six awards at last November’s State Quality Awards ceremony, among which was Best Film. The cast is composed of high-caliber Greek actors, such as Yvonne Maltezou, Christos Stergioglou, Christos Loulis and Ioanna Tsirigouli, and the story is centered on Maraki, a 40-year-old woman who, despite dreams of greater things, finds herself stuck in the mediocrity of routine, running a pastry shop in her native town.
