The Mermaid Award is a prize for the best LGBTQI-themed film from the official selection of the Thessaloniki Film Festival. For the second year in a row Mastercard supports the award with a monetary prize of 3,000 euros.
The members of the Mermaid Jury of the 64th Thessaloniki International Film Festival are Mihai Chirilov, film critic and festival organizer; Evi Kalogiropoulou, visual artist and filmmaker; Ivan Mitifiot, the Artistic Director of the Festival Écrans Mixtes.
Mihai Chirilov is a film critic and the artistic director of the Transilvania International Film Festival, which he co-founded in 2002. In addition, he works as a curator for the Romanian Film Festival 'Making Waves' in New York and as an advisor for the documentary festival ‘fARAD' in the city of Arad, Romania. He co-organized the complete retrospective of Lucian Pintilie's work at MoMA and many Romanian film seasons abroad. He is a member of both FIPRESCI Association and the European Film Academy and used to be part of the selection panel for the Lux Prize nominations. He did jury duties at various film festivals such as Hong Kong, Berlin (including the Teddy Bear jury), Karlovy Vary, Gothenburg, Chicago, Cleveland, San Francisco, Haifa, Gijon and Moscow, among many others. He contributed to several film anthologies and is the co-author of a book about Lars von Trier, The Films, the Women, the Ghosts. He translated into Romanian three of Chuck Palahniuk’s novels, Choke, Snuff, and Diary. He lives in Bucharest.
Ivan Mitifiot is the Artistic Director of the Festival Écrans Mixtes in Lyon – France, of which he is the co-founder in 2011. Hosting 15,000 festival-goers, it is one of the biggest queer festival in France. To date, the festival’s guests of honor have been: John Waters, James Ivory, Terence Davies, Panos H. Koutras, Christophe Honoré, Alain Guiraudie, Catherine Corsini, Jonathan Caouette, Monika Treut, João Pedro Rodrigues, Bruce LaBruce, Marie Losier, André Téchiné, Ulrike Ottinger and Gaël Morel. Ivan Mitifiot participated in the book La Passion selon Vallois, dedicated to Philippe Vallois, pioneer of gay cinema in France. He appears in Les Cercles du vicieux by Philippe Vallois and regularly plays in the French filmmaker Rémi Lange’s films (Le Chanteur).
Evi Kalogiropoulou is a filmmaker and visual artist working in Athens. Evi has studied at the Athens University of Economics and Business, and the Athens School of Fine Arts, and she holds a Master in Moving Image from the Royal College of Art. She is was Artist-in-Residence at Somerset House Studios in London. Evi’s short films and video art had various screenings in spaces such as the BFI and the Whitechapel Gallery in London, while she has also participated in numerous art exhibitions. Her projects explore ideas associated with the inclusion/exclusion and cross-culture identity, female figures in Ancient Greek mythology frames, and post-apolcalyptic environments. Her short film Motorway 65 (2020) premiered in official competition at the 2020 Cannes Film Festival. In 2022, her short film On Xerxes’ Throne won the CANAL+ award at the 61st Semaine de la Critique. Her latest project My Alexandria (2023) is an experimental short film commissioned by the Onassis Foundation for the festival “Archive of Desire” dedicated to the poet C.P. Cavafy curated at the New Museum at New York. She is currently working on her debut feature Cora, which received the Eurimages development prize in Cinemart 2021 and the ARTE/youtube prize at the Atelier Cinéfondation, Cannes Film Festival 2021.
