Thessaloniki Int’l Doc Festival’s A Success, Says Head Of Program

The 28^th edition of the Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival in Greece comes to an end this weekend with Sunday’s awards ceremony, where the top prize of the Golden Alexander will be announced.

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Yorgos Krassakopoulos, head of program for TiDF (as well as the separate Thessaloniki Film Festival in November, which showcases narrative films) assesses this year’s event as a success.

“Things have been going great,” he tells Deadline. “Audiences were there, which is very important every time. Filmmakers are here in bigger numbers every year, I have to say. And I think that this year we might have set a record… In all, we had more than 200 guests for the program. And that has to do a lot with the fact that we have many premieres, world, international, European. So the filmmakers and the crew, they’re coming en masse. The editors will be here, the sound people will be here, the characters of documentaries will be here, and we absolutely love that.”

TiDF is the first major international film festival to follow the Berlinale, which ended in controversy last month after pro-Palestinian speeches made headlines at the event’s closing gala. Syrian Palestinian director Abdallah al-Khatib, winner of the best new filmmaker award, used his acceptance speech to criticize Germany for its support of Israel, calling it a “partner in genocide” over the decimation of Gaza. That prompted Germany’s Commissioner for Culture and the Media, which oversees the Berlinale, to convene an emergency meeting to discuss the future of festival director Tricia Tuttle. (As Deadline reported, after an outpouring of support for Tuttle from prominent members of the film community including Tilda Swinton and Todd Haynes, the government called off its threat to fire Tuttle).

Like many European festivals, Thessaloniki, too, is government-supported and technically under the supervision of the Greek Ministry of Culture. But Krassakopoulos says there’s a difference between the dynamics at a Berlinale and the two Thessaloniki festivals.

“We, as an organization, belong to the Ministry of Culture. But we are autonomous. We have free reign. They do not interfere with our program,” Krassakopoulos says. “And apart from the money that we get from the Ministry of Culture, a big part of our funding comes from European programs, it comes from the region [in Greece] that also funds us and state television and also many private sponsors that help us get this off the ground… We are, I would say completely free to program what we want.”

Krassakopoulos adds, “We wouldn’t program anything that’s incendiary or that promotes hate speech or anything like that, but that goes without saying… We are very free to do our selection and apart from our own discussions between the program team and the artistic director — which have to do with only artistic [considerations] and what the documentaries that we are watching talk about — there is no one else who comes and says, ‘You can screen this or not that.’”

Two years ago, TiDF faced its own controversy when the festival screened the documentary Stray Bodies, which touched on abortion and IVF treatments. After religious conservatives objected to the film’s poster – which depicted an apparently pregnant Virgin Mary nailed to a cross – riot police were called out to head off any potential disturbances at the premiere.

This year’s event has proceeded without uproar. Among highlights, Krassakopoulos notes the attendance of Oscar-winning actress Juliette Binoche, who unveiled her directorial debut, the documentary In-I In Motion that examines a dance-theatrical show she created with choreographer-dancer Akram Khan.

“She has been to our [November] narrative festival as well,” Krassakopoulos mentions. “So, she knew the territory and she knew us.”

Krassakopoulos also moderated a public conversation with Binoche. Among his questions for her was, “How do you go from being a well-known actress into directing and documentary specifically? And so we started from that, but as like most interesting conversations go, we talked about everything from her work as a documentary filmmaker to basically life… She’s so open and she’s so giving and she’s so down to earth and it was a breeze. And I think both the audience and hopefully her, I think she did, and certainly me, I really enjoyed that talk.”

TiDF presented an honorary Golden Alexander to filmmaker Bill Morrison, director of Dawson City: Frozen Time and the 2025 Oscar-nominated short documentary Incident.

“We had screened his films in the past, of course, but to have him here and to have him give a talk and interact with audiences during the screenings, it was really, really nice,” Krassakopoulos comments. “Actually, he said, ‘I want to come back. I want to be on this jury.’ I think we’re going to take him up on it.”

Morrison’s work is archive driven, which fit neatly with a theme of this year’s program – an exploration of the importance of archive under the title All the World’s Memory, “a nod to Alain Resnais’s titular documentary (Toute la mémoire du monde, 1956).”

“We wanted to have a program that would showcase how archive can be used in documentary filmmaking from structuring films completely on archival material to using it to tell a story in a more potent and good way,” Krassakopoulos explains, noting that the Thessaloniki festival is working with the Greek Film Center and the Greek Film Academy on a database of Greek cinema that is expected to launch online in April.

“It will start with 2,000 titles and it will expand continuously, hopefully. And it’s not only about having films there and their cast and crews and all that, but also where the print is, in what state the print is, who holds the rights, and all these things that I think are very crucial for festivals, for archives. And it’s something that did not exist so far.”

The Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival has become known for the strength of its programming. Last year, the highly regarded Coexistence, My Ass! won the festival’s Golden Alexander before going on to be shortlisted for the Academy Awards. Child of Dust, directed by Weronika Mliczewska, earned recognition in International Competition at TiDF before claiming numerous prizes around the world. Krassakopoulos admits to a sense of pride when films showcased at TiDF are embraced at other festivals and awards shows.

“I will not lie. I absolutely love it,” he concedes. “In the case of Coexistence, My Ass!, it had already played at Sundance. But we had other films that premiered here, and then throughout the year, you would see them screen in tens of festivals. And whenever I’m coming on a program of a documentary festival or a festival in general, and I see one of our titles, I’m like, ‘Oh, good.’ When they win an award, I’m like, ‘Yes, you deserve it!’ It’s like — I mean, such a crude analogy — sending your kid to kindergarten and then seeing it going off to college, but I do love it and I’m very happy.”

He adds, “The whole festival team, we really care about films, and we really care about filmmakers. And I’m not just saying it to be nice or anything. We do it because we really love films that can make a tiny bit of difference or they could change someone’s mind or point of view, that they find a launchpad here in Thessaloniki and they could go on and spread a good message around the world.”