“Reframing Images”: The 13th Athens Avant Garde Film Festival

Exploring innovative aesthetic trends, the programme aims to show how filmmakers use and experiment with stylistic tools to convey their relationship to the contemporary world

The Greek Film Archive (TAINIOTHIKI), in collaboration with ARTWORKS, presents the new competition section “Reframing Images” at the Athens Avant Garde Film Festival. With the support of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF), ARTWORKS offers the ARTWORKS Best Film Award of 5,000 euros to support filmmakers who innovate and experiment with the moving image and contribute significantly to the development of contemporary cinematic art.

The jury of the competition section is composed of the SNF ARTWORKS Fellows in the field of the moving image, Nerytan Zinziaria, Christina Koutsospyrou and Costis Charamuntanis.

26 films by 27 directors will be shown. In particular, the programme includes 3 feature films (all debuts), 3 medium-length films and 20 short films, with a strong representation of 15 female and 12 male filmmakers from all over the world, in a Greek premiere.

The renewed team of the 13th FPKA welcomes this new collaboration with great pleasure and looks forward to presenting its audience with films that surprise with their appearance.

The newly established “Reframing Images” Competition Department of FPCA aims to highlight creators who explore new forms of storytelling and cinematic form. Regardless of length or genre, the section presents films ranging from 2 to 85 minutes in length, coming from 27 different countries, including Argentina, Nigeria, Cambodia, Cambodia, Greece, Palestine, Iran, Cyprus, Cyprus, Thailand, Japan, India, Lebanon, Brazil and Chile.

The 26 films in the programme include a selection of fiction, essays, creative documentaries, experimental and art films.
Exploring innovative aesthetic trends, the programme aims to show how filmmakers use and experiment with stylistic tools to convey their relationship to the contemporary world. Combining essay writing with the use of archival material, some films explore the ways in which the intimate and political content of images can function as a space for reflection.

Others examine the legacy of colonialism and its contemporary postcolonial implications, while still others seek to give form to experiences of exile, migration and social marginalisation. With a strong sensory approach, some films attempt to capture personal and collective experiences of oppression and violence, such as patriarchal culture in Iran, the 2019 popular uprising in Chile, the war in Palestine and militarisation in Lebanon.

Composing visual mosaics with a dreamlike mood, other films explore the imaginative potential of landscapes, whether natural or man-made, and their coexistence. Taking their cue from diaries, some filmmakers collect fragments of everyday life to reconstruct them in a poetic and thoughtful way.

Who will present and attend

Among the filmmakers in the new Reframing Images competition section who will be attending the festival are award-winning Serbian filmmaker Emilija Gašić, whose first feature film 78 Days was developed at the Venice Biennale College Cinema and selected for the Bright Future section of the Rotterdam International Film Festival, internationally acclaimed Chilean filmmaker and visual artist Malena Szlam, whose work has been shown at major museums and festivals and is included in the permanent collection of MoMA, and Moroccan visual artist Hicham Gardaf, whose work exploring the politics of place and landscape has been shown at festivals such as Berlin and museums such as the Centre Pompidou.

Director Lefteris Panayiotou’s cinematic approach resists the dominant one-dimensional narratives, while Nina Alexandraki, drawing on philosophy and cinema, seeks the deep intimacy of experience.
Argentinean Pablo Marín, film critic, director and professor at the prestigious Elias Querejeta Zine Eskola (EQZE) film school in San Sebastian, Spain, has gained international acclaim for his films, which have screened at festivals including New York and Rotterdam, while Chinese-Canadian visual artist Daphne Xu explores the politics and poetics of place and diaspora with her film, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and screened at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Cypriot artist and PhD candidate Maria Anastasiou, whose work has been screened at the BFI London Film Festival and the Whitney Museum in New York, and Danae Eau, who explores the process of creating collective and personal narratives, whose work has been screened at the Rotterdam International Film Festival and the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London, among others.

Shambhavi Kaul, an Indian visual artist and experimental filmmaker, creates worlds that reorder time and space; her work has been shown at festivals in Toronto, Berlin and Rotterdam, and in museums such as MoMA and Tate Modern.
Nate Lavey, an experimental filmmaker and photographer with a strong interest in politics and landscape, whose latest short film Very Gentle Work had its world premiere at the Directors’ Fortnight at the last Cannes Film Festival, and who analyses the relationship between cinema and theory and epistemology through film essays, and Argentinian director Agustina Sánchez Gavier, whose graduation film Nuestra sombra (Our Shadow) was selected at the Directors’ Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival, will also present their films to the Athens audience.

Other Paricipations

Celeste Rojas Mugica is a Chilean-Argentine visual artist, photographer and director, with a master’s degree from the renowned Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola film school. She is represented by Rolf Art Gallery and her work has been shown at major festivals such as FIDMarseille, Viennale, Ars Electronica and the San Sebastian Film Festival, and has been supported by the Hubert Bals Fund of the Rotterdam International Film Festival.
Faraz Fesharaki, best known for his award-winning cinematography in What Do We See When We Look at the Sky?, which premiered at the Berlin Film Festival and won the FIPRESCI award, makes his directorial debut with What Did You Dream Last Night, Parajanov?
Palestinian artist Razan AlSalah, whose work focuses on the disappearance and visibility of places, people and histories through colonial narratives, has received grants and fellowships from Sundance, among others, and her work has been presented at international festivals such as FIDMarseille, Hot Docs and Prismatic Ground.

Thai filmmaker Chanasorn Chaikitiporn, whose film Here We Are, selected by Berlin’s Forum Expanded, explores the present by reflecting on the past, highlighting how the legacy of colonialism persists and is normalised in contemporary society.
Beatrice Gibson, a London-based artist and filmmaker, has exhibited her films and installations at major festivals and galleries, including the Camden Art Centre in London and the Mercer Union in Toronto, and has twice won the Tiger Prize at the Rotterdam International Film Festival and the Baloise Art Prize at Art Basel.
Karimah Ashadu is a Nigerian artist and filmmaker based between Hamburg and Lagos whose work explores labour, patriarchy and independence in the socio-cultural context of Nigeria and its diaspora. Her work has been exhibited internationally, most notably at this year’s Venice Biennale, where she was awarded the Silver Lion.
Miranda Pennell is a London-based artist and filmmaker whose award-winning work explores imperialism through images from the British National Archives. Her films have been screened internationally and exhibited at institutions including Tate Britain and the Whitechapel Gallery.

Visual artist and filmmaker Marcel Mrejen explores the role of technology in living and economic systems through film, installation and sound. A graduate of the Gerrit Rietveld Academy and resident at Le Fresnoy, his work has been exhibited at institutions such as the Stedelijk Museum, and his first short film, Memories of an Unborn Sun, won the Jury Prize at Visions du Réel in 2024.
Francisco Rodríguez Teare is a Chilean artist and filmmaker based in France whose work explores themes of power, violence and memory through film, video and installation. His films have been exhibited internationally in major venues including the Stedelijk Museum, the Taipei Biennale and major film festivals such as Toronto and New York.
Leonardo Pirondi is a Brazilian filmmaker and artist whose work combines elements of documentary and fiction. His films have been screened at major festivals including Toronto, Rotterdam and New York, and he is a fellow of the Sundance Institute and a graduate of the California Institute of the Arts.
Janaina Wagner is a Brazilian visual artist and filmmaker whose work is included in important collections such as KADIST and Instituto Inhotim, and who is a doctoral candidate at Le Fresnoy.

Maryam Tafakory is an Iranian artist working in film and performance who has been nominated for Film London’s Jarman 2024 Award. Her work has been exhibited in major museums such as MoMA and Tate Modern, and her films have screened at the Cannes Directors’ Fortnight, as well as the New York, Toronto and Locarno film festivals. She has won numerous awards, including the Tiger Award at the Rotterdam International Film Festival.
Shuhei Hatano is a Japanese artist and film director. His film Radiance won a special mention at the Pesaro International New Film Festival and was selected by the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen.
Lawrence Abu Hamdan, born in Lebanon, is a researcher, filmmaker, artist and activist known as “Private Ear”, with a PhD from the University of London. Founder of Earshot, a non-profit organisation focused on sound for human rights, his work has been shown at MoMA and the Venice Biennale and is in major collections including the Tate Modern and the Guggenheim. He has received numerous awards, including the Turner Prize and the Nam June Paik Prize.
Film selection: Nefeli Gaband, Jacob Skenderides