Juries & Awards

Immersive: All Around Cinema Award

The competition section “Immersive: All Around Cinema” embraces creations that make use of high-end technologies to present different views of extended reality. The Immersive Competition section of the 64th Thessaloniki Film Festival showcases new films that offer an exciting interactive viewing experience, transcending film genres and immersing the viewer in each artwork’s unique environment. The Golden Alexander awarded to the best film of the section is accompanied by a monetary award of 2,000 euros.

The members of the Immersive Jury of the 64th Thessaloniki International Film Festival are: Panos Giannikopoulos, art historian and curator; Pedro Harres, film director and visual artist; and Thelgia Petraki, filmmaker. The films of this program are available for viewing on the first floor of Glass House (former Nursery School, Thessaloniki Port).

 

Thelyia Petraki is a film director, scriptwriter, and anthropologist, awarded by the Hellenic Film Academy in 2021. She has directed the following short films: Pray 2012 (screened at festivals like Palm Springs, Uppsala, Austin, etc.), Helga is in Lund 2016, which premiered at Clermont-Ferrand, as well as the medium-length documentary Me and the Others 2015 (Thessaloniki Documentary Film Festival), in collaboration with COSMOTE TV. Her third short film, Bella, 2020, among others, took part in the Berlinale Short Form Station 2019, received awards at numerous festivals worldwide (Visions du Réel 2020, Oberhausen 2020, Busan International Short Film Festival 2021, Drama Film Festival, etc.), and was nominated for the European Film Awards (EFA) in 2021. She has recently finished shooting her fourth short film titled 400 Cassettes, in co-production with Romania and Germany. She is currently in the development stage of her first feature film.

 

Pedro Harres is a Berlin-based Brazilian animation director, scriptwriter, and multimedia artist. He studied film, animation, and philosophy. His work varies greatly in terms of style and formats, including installations, films, and XR. However, an allegorical use of space can be perceived as a constant throughout his work; space is considered not only as support for the mise-en-scène, but as a layer that deepens storytelling, calls for reflection, and ultimately resignifies the artwork. Hsis path is deeply intertwined with the Venice International Film Festival. Castillo y el Armado was his first animated short, which received numerous awards, oscar-qualified, and premiered at the Venice71 – Orizzonti Competition. From the Main Square was his Master’s thesis in Directing Animation at Babelsberg Film University, as well as his debut in interactive VR. Among ten other awards, it won the Grand Jury Prize from Venice Immersive at Venice79.

 

Panos Giannikopoulos (Athens, 1991) is an Art Historian and Curator. He currently coordinates the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Artist Fellowship Program. He's the curator for Greece at the 60th International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale (2024) and was a part of the curatorial team for the 2021 Mediterranea 19 Young Artists Biennale School of Waters. Recent exhibitions include This Current Between Us at the PPC Historic Steam Electric Station of Neo Faliro (2022-2023). He has collaborated with museums, galleries, and art organizations, including GAMeC in Bergamo, ACG Gallery, B. & M. Theocharakis Foundation, Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center (SNFCC), The Breeder, Haus N Athen, Korai in Nicosia, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin, SNEHTA, the Institute of Contemporary Greek Art – iset, and Athens Biennale. His texts have been published in newspapers, magazines, publications, and exhibition catalogs. In 2016, he served as a Curatorial Fellow at the Schwarz Foundation, and in 2021, he received the Curatorial Award Premio Lorenzo Bonaldi per l'Arte – EnterPrize.