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40th INTERNATIONAL THESSALONIKI FILM FESTIVAL
NOVEMBER 12-21
Panos Koutras, Themis Bazaka (The attack of the giant moussaka),
Sasa Gedeon (Navrat Idiota),
Chulpan Khamatova (Luna Papa)
Actress Themis Bazaka considers her participation in Panos Koutras' film The attack of the giant moussaka, as one of the greatest moments in her cinematographic career, which gave her the chance to see how she could perform in a comedy.
"In the beginning, comedy was an expectation and a suspicion", she stated, "since I was excluded from this type and didn't have any offers from directors for a comedy screenplay". Replying to a pertinent question, she said, "a film cannot be considered serious by its topic, but by being what it claims to be", and added that in Panos Koutras' film she found an "essence", which is what she looks for in screenplays and roles.
The director of the film Panos Koutras clarified that The attack of the giant moussaka followed a "budget" formula, as he believed that it would be completed sooner that way. Nevertheless, deep down it is a personal film, which operated as a garbage can in which he could place parts of himself that he wanted to dispose of, as he characteristically said.
In his reference to his film Navrat Idiota, which is based on the novel The Idiot, by F. Dostoyevsky, the Czech director Sasa Gedeon stated that the film's characters are old, but the story is new considering the circumstances have changed. He also added that what fascinated him about The Idiot was its "ambiguity" and also the fact that the idiot acts as a mirror of the people in his environment.
Chulpan Khamatova, the star of Luna Papa, by Bakhtar Khudojnazarov, remarked that the film is derived from a fantasy world, from the world of art, of Chagal, Pirantelo and other artists.
She also added that, the fact that the film shares similar characteristics with Emir Kusturica's Black cat, white cat is a coincidence, as Khudojnazarov hadn't seen the Serbian director's film.
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