Thessaloniki Documentary Festival Head on Power of Art to ‘Preserve Reality’ With Truth, Democracy Under Threat

As the Thessaloniki Intl. Documentary Festival prepares to host its 27th edition, which runs March 6 – 16, festival director Orestis Andreadakis sees no shortage of threats to truth, freedom and the values on which the democratic order is based. “Four months have passed since the [Thessaloniki Intl. Film Festival], but it seems like we’re already living in a completely different world — unfortunately, not a better one,” Andreadakis tells Variety. 

Likening the times to “a historical documentary about the 1930s, screened backwards,” he describes world events as “an educational documentary that taught us nothing. It is a testimony for the horror of fascism and totalitarianism that it seems we have forgotten,” he continues. “It is a film record of a horrific historical reality that some are trying to repeat in the worst possible way.”

This year’s festival begins hardly a fortnight after Russia’s war in Ukraine marked its three-year anniversary, and as a tenuous ceasefire in Gaza seeking to put an end to that bloody conflict appears in jeopardy. In the U.S., President Donald Trump has launched an unprecedented assault on personal liberties and political norms in his first six weeks in office. Meanwhile, Europe’s continued rightward turn was solidified by recent elections in Germany, where the far-right AfD party secured 20% of the popular vote. 

While widespread unrest and uncertainty could make the very notion of a documentary film festival seem quaint, however, Andreadakis insists such events underscore the importance of art as a “bulwark” against the assaults on our fundamental principles “as the value of truth is in danger of becoming irrelevant.”

“The art of documentary tries to preserve reality. This is the most important thing in our difficult times. To realize what is truth, what is reality,” he says. The films screening at this year’s Thessaloniki Documentary Festival “portray and unveil what we experience in our precarious times.”

The festival kicks off March 6 with “About a Hero” (pictured), director Piotr Winiewicz’s AI-assisted documentary that takes aim at German auteur Werner Herzog — who has been loudly dismissive of artificial intelligence — by creating an artificial version of a Herzog film. The closing film, Shoshannah Stern’s “Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore,” which arrives fresh off a well-received Sundance premiere, tells the story of the titular, trailblazing actor who in 1986 became the first deaf person to win an Oscar.

Across the festival’s three main competition sections and diverse programming strands, a total of 261 documentaries will be screened, including 72 world, 40 international and 11 European premieres. Among them are 71 feature and short films from the host nation, reflecting Andreadakis and the programming team’s commitment to the Thessaloniki Doc Fest as a “showcase of the Greek industry.”

Highlights from the international competition, which sees 10 films vying for the Golden Alexander, include a trio of documentaries coming off Sundance premieres — “Coexistence, My Ass!,” Amber Fares’ portrait of Israeli activist and comedian Noam Shuster Eliassi; Jesse Short Bull and David France’s “Free Leonard Peltier,” about the Native American activist who spent nearly half a century in prison; and Gianluca Matarrese’s “GEN_,” about an unconventional doctor at a fertility clinic in Milan — as well as Juanjo Pereira’s “Under the Flags, the Sun,” which follows the discovery of an audiovisual archive documenting Paraguay’s 35-year dictatorship, which debuted at the Berlin Film Festival. 

World premieres in the main competition include “Sculpted Souls,” the latest documentary from veteran Greek filmmaker Stavros Psillakis, which follows a Swiss dentist who’s spent nearly three decades treating lepers in Greece for free, and “Child of Dust,” by Polish filmmaker Weronika Mliczewska, about the child of an American soldier left behind during the Vietnam War who seeks to reconnect with his father in the U.S. 

Other festival highlights include a screening of Steve Pink’s “The Last Republican,” which follows the efforts of former Republican politician Adam Kinzinger to bring Donald Trump to justice after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, as well as a sidebar dedicated to the rise of artificial intelligence which includes a screening of Tilda Swinton’s directorial debut, “The Hexagonal Hive and a Mouse in a Maze.”

An honorary Golden Alexander will be awarded to French filmmaker Nicolas Philibert, who will deliver a masterclass on March 8, and whose prolific career will be celebrated with a screening of films including BAFTA nominee “To Be and To Have” and Berlin Golden Bear winner “On the Adamant.” American documentary filmmaker and multi-hyphenate artist Lauren Greenfield will also be honored with a tribute to her award-winning body of work that includes Sundance prizewinner “The Queen of Versailles” and her most recent project, the documentary series “Social Studies.” Greenfield will deliver a masterclass on March 13.

The festival’s 27th edition begins just days removed from massive protests on the two-year anniversary of the Tempe railway disaster that claimed 57 lives, with hundreds of thousands of Greeks taking to the streets in what have been described as the country’s largest protests since the fall of the military junta in 1974.

The Tempe tragedy, which took place on the eve of the festival’s 25th edition, prompted the organizers to cancel that year’s opening ceremony amid an unprecedented national outpouring of anger and grief. Two years later, with memories of that tragic day still fresh, more protests are planned in Thessaloniki and across Greece, as the country seeks justice for the tragic loss of so many lives. 

Against that backdrop, this year’s festival hopes to accomplish what so many documentary filmmakers set out to achieve: to bear witness, spark debate, speak truth to power, and provide some measure of comfort and community in tumultuous times.

“Thessaloniki is a city that carries memory and history. It’s a place that knows about geopolitical tensions, and the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival has always been a place of dialogue, of freedom, of culture,” says Andreadakis. “This is the most important thing. Because art is one of the most powerful weapons of democracy.”

The Thessaloniki Intl. Documentary Festival runs March 6 – 16.