elc team
The first announcements for the 28th Thessaloniki Documentary Festival, taking place 5–15 March 2026, are now underway. The Festival presents five documentaries dedicated to major cultural figures, as well as the official poster of this year’s edition, designed by the renowned visual artist Alexandros Psychoulis.
Poster
The familiar image of the cranes at the Port of Thessaloniki is given new life through the work of Alexandros Psychoulis, whose artwork will “dress” the 28th edition of the Festival.
As the artist notes:
“I grew up facing the port of Volos, watching from my balcony the gigantic cranes that I later encountered at the port of Thessaloniki as well. I grew up waiting for the moment when the cranes’ claws emerged from the ships’ holds, drawing out and revealing part of their insides much like documentaries draw from life a fragment of it, which for a moment will hover before the eyes of the viewers.”
Alexandros Psychoulis was born in Volos in 1966 and studied painting at the Athens School of Fine Arts. His early works are interactive installations, activated by the viewer, that probe the subconscious, decoding fears, desires, and memories into images or sound. His ongoing artistic practice continues to explore the landscape of digital reality through spatial installations, animation, and painting.
In 1997, he received the Benesse Prize for his work Black Box, presented at the 47th Venice Biennale one of the first interactive digital works worldwide to raise questions of language and communication.
He has held numerous solo exhibitions in Greece and abroad, including: Accountability, a.antonopoulou.art, Athens (2024); A Cultivable Ecstasy, a.antonopoulou.art, Athens (2017); Alien Species, Diatopos, Nicosia (2011); The Room, a.antonopoulou.art, Athens (2009); Mammals, Zina Athanasiadou, Thessaloniki (2005); Body Milk, a.antonopoulou.art, Athens (2003); Talk About Your Life in Memoryless Materials, Lionheart, Boston (1999); Do you Want?, Cartwright Hall Art Gallery, Bradford, UK (1998); Nowhere Is Far Enough to Escape the Images and the Pain They Caused You, Deitch Projects, New York (1998).
Today, he is Professor of Art and Technology at the Department of Architecture of the University of Thessaly, and Director of the postgraduate program “Post-Industrial Design.”
His works are held in the permanent collections of the National Museum of Contemporary Art (EMST), the National Gallery of Greece, the Tate Gallery, the Guggenheim Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, among others.
First titles announced
The Festival has secured five documentaries revealing unknown or lesser-seen facets of iconic figures: Kim Novak, Robert Wilson, Marianne Faithfull, William S. Burroughs, Patti Smith, Frank Zappa and Irvine Welsh.
Broken English
Filmmakers Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard present an intimate portrait of Marianne Faithfull, who passed away last year. Broken English traces how, for more than sixty years, one of music’s most influential icons continuously reinvented herself.
Guided by Tilda Swinton and George MacKay, the film blends documentary and fiction to create a space filled with memories, performances, and fragments of Faithfull’s life, a place they call the “Ministry of Non-Forgetting.” A cinematic ritual of remembrance, stamped with Faithfull’s own spirit, the documentary is more than a biography: it feels like a conversation with an artist who resisted simplification and lived entirely on her own terms.
A highlight of the film is the moving final studio recording of Marianne Faithfull, alongside Nick Cave.
Kim Novak’s Vertigo
In Kim Novak’s Vertigo, by Festival friend Alexandre O. Philippe, the documentary unveils new facets of Kim Novak, the Hollywood star who shaped film history through her iconic role in Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpiece Vertigo (O desmótis tou ilíngou).
In the film, Kim Novak opens her home to the director and the audience, sharing artworks, iconic costumes from films she starred in, as well as memories from her collaboration with Hitchcock. This hauntingly beautiful documentary follows the journey of the famous American actress who left cinema behind and devoted herself to painting, yet will forever remain the ultimate star of Vertigo.
Reality Is Not Enough
The author of Trainspotting, the novel that defined an era, Irvine Welsh remains a radical voice who never stops experimenting.
While touring Canada to promote his new book, he once again explores the limits of consciousness by trying DMT in a specialized therapeutic center. What follows is a psychedelic, kaleidoscopic trip that places us quite literally inside the mind of an untamed creator.
A skewed portrait of an emblematic writer and at the same time a collective portrait of British society and its stakes over more than four decades, Reality Is Not Enough, the new film by Paul Sng, is both a deep dive into the mechanisms of artistic creation and a powerful call for political vigilance and militancy.
The portrait of Welsh is enriched with readings from his works by devoted fans, including Nick Cave and Liam Neeson.
Robert Wilson and the Civil Wars
The gripping documentary Robert Wilson and the Civil Wars, directed by Howard Brookner and filmed in 1984, will be screened at the Festival in a restored print.
The film follows theatre director Robert Wilson, who recently passed away, as he attempts to create a 12-hour epic opera for the 1984 Olympic Games. Brookner, a close friend of Wilson, captured this dizzying creative process as it took shape through the gaze of a truly extraordinary artist.
The film remained unknown for many years, as part of the material was lost during Hurricane Sandy in 2012. For 12 years, the director’s nephew Aaron Brookner worked on restoring the print in order to preserve this invaluable document of Wilson’s creative process.
Nova ’78
The Festival will also screen another film from Howard Brookner’s rare archive: Nova ’78, filmed in 1978, restored by the director’s nephew and presented with striking footage much of which has never before been made public.
The documentary takes us to the legendary “Nova Convention” (Nova Convention), a three-day artistic event held in New York from 30 November to 2 December 1978, in tribute to William S. Burroughs and featuring legendary figures such as Patti Smith, Frank Zappa, Allen Ginsberg, and Philip Glass.
These precious restored images revive this historic convention, a crossroads of culture, politics, and society, and allow us to enter the inner worlds of the people who shaped contemporary culture.
