Thessaloniki 2025

The >>Film Forward competition section hosts movies that “challenge conventions and utter a bold and daring cinematic language.” Ten films are selected for the section and awards include the >>Film Forward Golden Alexander, featuring a 6,000-euro cash prize, and the >>Film Forward Silver Alexander, featuring a 3,000-euro cash prize. The 27th Thessaloniki Documentary Film Festival runs March 6-16.

The Agora of the 27th Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival handed out its Docs-in-Progress and Pitching Forum awards March 12. The main awards in Docs-in-Progress went to Magma (France, Algeria), Home Court (Greece, Netherlands, France, Bulgaria) and Tower, Sun and the Seven of Wands (Georgia), while the Hungarian Highways of Hope won the main IEFTA Award (€10,000) for Best Documentary in Development. All awards…

The ten films selected for the International Competition of the 27th Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival (March 6-16, 2025) will be eyeing up a series of prizes, among them the Golden Alexander, accompanied by a cash prize of 12,000 euros. The 10 docs within the festival’s Newcomers section will compete for the Golden Alexander “Dimitri Eipides” Award, accompanied by a €10,000 cash prize, and the Silver Alexander Award.

The initiative was announced March 12 during the Agora of the 27th Thessaloniki Doc Fest. "Doc Together" aims to explore how displaced or exiled professionals can access funding, resources and industry support in their current locations or in their countries of origin if they are excluded from national funding opportunities or unable to receive support.

A total of 71 full-length and short documentaries from Greece will be screened in the festival’s International, Newcomers and >>Film Forward Competition sections, as well as in the Open Horizons, Platform+ and Special Screenings sections. “Vibrant and fascinating, unraveling heart-wrenching human stories and burning up-to-the-minute issues, the Greek documentaries take centre stage,” write festival organisers.

Over the past fifty years, the Greek island of Mykonos has undergone radical transformation. Once an affordable, off-the-beaten-track paradise, it has become an exclusive, high-end destination. What was once a beacon of inclusivity is now a symbol of luxury tourism. How did this small Aegean getaway become a melting pot for such divergent experiences? Was it a paradise? Is it still? Director Steve Krikris discusses his feature doc, world-premiering in Thessaloniki, with BDE.

Ahead of the 27th Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival, Business Doc Europe spoke with Angeliki Vergou, Head of Agora, the festival’s industry branch that unfolds both on-site and virtually. “Thessaloniki has always been a melting pot of cultures and civilisations, and that’s why we bring all these diverse voices together here,” she says.

Nora Philippe spent over a decade working on Girls for Tomorrow, which had its world premiere at this year’s festival. The film follows four young women studying at New York’s Barnard College as they navigate questions of feminism, patriarchy and capitalism. Philippe reflects on her own journey making the documentary, the challenges she faced, and her approach to storytelling. “For them, this space was also therapeutic to some extent, and that was the same for me. I was looking for answers—about motherhood, freedom, feminism—answers I couldn’t find in any other way,” she tells BDE.

It’s 50 years now since the end of the Vietnam war. A still largely unchronicled aspect of the conflict is the plight of the “Amerasian” children born to Vietnamese mothers but abandoned by their American GI fathers. Sang, the subject of Weronika Mliczewska’s new doc Child Of Dust (sold by Rise and Shine and a world premiere in competition in Thessaloniki) is one of these lost souls. The director talks to BDE.

Ventura Durall’s latest documentary Supernatural, premiering in the International Competition of the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival, delves into the complex relationship between science and magic through the lens of a father-son dynamic. A co-production between Spain, France, and Belgium, Supernatural is being sold by Taskovski Films.