26th THESSALONIKI DOCUMENTARY FESTIVAL // 7-17/3/2024
Powerful Films By And For Key Players
Steve McQueen, Frederick Wiseman / Patricia Field, Édouard Louis, Dario Argento, Anita Pallenberg
Astonishing documentaries by some of cinema’s greatest filmmakers, such as Steve McQueen, and Frederick Wiseman, as well as illuminating stories featuring notable figures from the art, music, and fashion fields, for example Patricia Field, Édouard Louis, Dario Argento, Anita Pallenberg are coming to the 26th Thessaloniki Documentary Festival (March 7-17, 2024).
Occupied City by the Academy Award winning British filmmaker Steve McQueen (Top Docs) made its debut during the recent Cannes Film Festival. The camera wanders around present-day's Amsterdam, and behind each corner of the contemporary urban landscape, it unveils the atrocities of the Nazi occupation, the traces of which have disappeared from the face of the city. A film reflecting on memory, History, and the passing of the times.
Cara Mones and Caroline Suh’s Sorry/Not Sorry (Open Horizons) delves into one of the most widely known stories of the #MeToo movement in Hollywood. In 2017, the New York Times published an article, detailing the sexual harassment charges filed by five women against famous comedian Louis C.K. The documentary captures the agony of these courageous women in sharing their traumatic experience with the audience, while simultaneously Louis C.K. continued on with his career, without hesitating to use these accusations as fodder for his shows.
A glimpse into the creative routine, life, and career of the renowned costume designer Patricia Field, whose work has impacted fashion and popular culture profoundly. The protagonists of Sex and the City, and Emily in Paris, as well as her partners, and friends talk about the unconventional personality of a woman, who has paved the way for so many creators in the world of fashion, in Michael Selditch’s documentary, Happy Clothes: A Film About Patricia Field (Open Horizons).
A kid, raised in a poor working-class family, is now, at a very young age, one of the most influential writers of his era, a spokesman of an entire generation. The documentary The Many Lives of Édouard Louis by the experienced documentary filmmaker François Caillat (Open Horizons) introduces us anew, and from within, to the great and particularly beloved in Greece, Édouard Louis. The movie is imbued with his fiery spirit, his sharp gaze, and the emotion inherent in his books that catapulted him to the pinnacle of European intellectual circles.
Within hotel rooms, sheltered from the outside world, Dario Argento created his most acclaimed films. Today, in a hotel room in Rome’s countryside, he writes his last script. In Simone Scafidi’s Dario Argento Panico (Open Horizons), a film crew follows him around, filming him as he returns to the confined conditions that gave birth to his most emblematic creations.
Alexis Bloom and Svetlana Zill’s Catching Fire: The Story Of Anita Pallenberg (Open Horizons), transports us to the sixties and seventies through the story of Anita Pallenberg, a muse to famous musicians, a model, as well as actress, having appeared in Nicolas Roeg’s Performance, and the cult film Barbarella, among others. Originally the wife of Rolling Stones bassist Brian Jones, and then later of Keith Richards, Pallenberg passed away in 2017, but she continues to inspire as a symbol of empowerment, strength and larger-than-life attitude. A passionate biography, as groovy as a rock and roll hymn, that is bittersweet, melancholic, but fraught with tension, at the same time.
The new movie by the 94-year-old Frederick Wiseman, who is amongst the greatest documentary filmmakers in the world (Top Docs), embarks on a journey to central France and lures us along with him to a dining experience in one of France's most important restaurants, La Maison Troisgros, which has held three Michelin stars for more than five decades. Menus Plaisirs - Les Troisgros demonstrates that haute cuisine demands ingenuity, imagination, and hard work in 240 minutes.
