‘Is it just coincidence that the world’s most messed-up country is making the world’s most messed-up cinema?’ – Steve Rose, The Guardian

Geographically unique and with a history of political turbulence, Greece is anything but predictable. It’s both beautiful and ugly, capricious and chaotic, and thus brimming with surprises. Amongst these is the cinema created in the 2000s – a period of severe financial crisis and lack of sufficient state funding.

In the 2000s, Greek cinema underwent a transformative shift. Idealisation gave way to dark, self-reflective storytelling, whilst family and state – the holy pillars of Greek society – came under critical examination and a new generation of filmmakers broke free from established traditions, and ventured into unexplored narrative territory.

Matchbox (2002) cracked open Pandora’s Box by viscerally portraying the dark side of the Greek family. Utterly extreme, and now a cult classic, it was a slap in the face for Greek audiences, and its heightened realism continues to shock more than two decades later.

Playing out like a Greek tragedy, Strella (2007) by Panos Koutras represented another ground breaking moment. The first Greek film centred around a trans woman protagonist, it challenged conventional notions of family and belonging and portrayed the Athenian queer experience unlike any other film at the time.

A hilarious satire, Plato’s Academy (2009) is the purest comedy in this assembly. Released at a time when Albanian and Chinese immigrants flooded the country to take on low-paid jobs, it skewers Greeks’ xenophobic attitudes, and exposes their existential fears.

And then came the landmark year of 2009. As the financial crisis broke and Grexit fears loomed, the Greek film industry was rocked by two cinematic grenades. First came Dogtooth (2009), by the relatively unknown young director of TV commercials, Yorgos Lanthimos. This was followed by Attenberg (2010) from emerging director Athina Rachel Tsangari. Lanthimos’ final Greek-language movie Alps (2011) solidified his reputation as an auteur with a unique, absurdist vision for which he is now globally known. While distinct in their artistic approaches, Tsangari and Lanthimos reimagined Greece through an unconventional lens, deploying a cool gaze and a deadpan sense of humour that sharply diverged from traditional depictions of Zorba-esque Mediterranean exuberance. The following year, The Guardian’s Steve Rose coined the term ‘Greek Weird Wave’, which is still used to describe a particular type of film made between 2009 – 2019.

Despite Lanthimos’ reluctance to embrace the label and its evident orientalism, a few films from this era do display similar characteristics: being indirectly political, they examine systems of control, while resisting earlier traditions of historicism and didacticism. They share a twisted sense of humour, revel in perverse sexuality, and feature deadpan performances more reminiscent of Samuel Beckett than of Balkan or Mediterranean sensibilities. Violence is ever present, especially within the family.

A brilliantly idiosyncratic film that sits slightly outside of this constellation, Suntan (2016), resists classification. Half uproarious comedy, half thriller, the film shares the bleak satirical undertones of Dogtooth and Attenberg whilst turning expectations for a typical Greek island holiday story on their head.

My Name is Eftuxia (2019) is the most sane film in the season. An engrossing biopic of Rebetiko genre songwriter Eftihia Papagianopoulou, it traces this feisty woman’s life, which challenged societal norms, against the backdrop of tumultuous changes – both the country’s and her own.

Digger (2020), produced by Tsangari, is another brilliant tragicomedy, set in the stunningly pictured damp woodlands of Northern Greece. Reminiscent of Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s The Beasts, though distinctly its own film, conflict is at its core: between nature and machine, local community and so-called progress, and a father and his long-estranged son.

The season will conclude with Animal (2023) by Sophia Exarchou, which offers the non-Instagrammable aspect of Greek summer by focusing on the working conditions of entertainment labour in tourist resorts. Filmed with a handheld camera, the viewer can almost smell the cigarettes and alcohol seeping from the screen – an experience in stark contrast to the meticulously composed cinema of Tsangari and Lanthimos.

The programme will run from February to April 2025, and will include director Q&As, panel discussions, expert introductions and special events. Each film will be screened twice, as an evening performance and as a matinee. Please visit individual film pages for all the details.

In addition, a special launch event will take place on Sunday 16 February – block your diary & stay tuned for details on this!