Tribute 2023: Angeliki Papoulia (GR)

 
01.02.2023 // I’m trying to do things that excite me because otherwise there is no point. I am always trying to find a way to work in theatre or film that is challenging for me. That’s what I’m looking for. (Angeliki Papoulia, interviewed at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival 2019)
 
At its 20th edition, CROSSING EUROPE devotes its Tribute program section to one of the most uncompromising and powerful actors of contemporary European auteur cinema, the Greek actor and theater director Angeliki Papoulia. At the festival, she is going to personally present a selection of her films and provide insights into her work at the Tribute Talk. The following feature films starring her will be part of the 2023 festival program:

| Announcement of the first films starring Angeliki Papoulia in the festival program 2023 |
  • KYNODONTAS | DOGTOOTH (GR 2009), 96 min, directed by: Yorgos Lanthimos – CROSSING EUROPE 2010 & 2013
  • A BLAST (GR, DE, NL 2014), 83 min, directed by: Syllas Tzoumerkas – CROSSING EUROPE 2015
  • THÁVMA TIS THÁLASSAS TON SARGASSÓN | THE MIRACLE OF THE SARGASSO SEA (GR, DE, NL, SE 2019), 121 min, directed by: Syllas Tzoumerkas – CROSSING EUROPE 2019
  • HUMAN FLOWERS OF FLESH (DE, FR 2022), 106 min, directed by: Helena Wittmann
  • ISIHIA 6-9 | SILENCE 6-9 (GR 2022), 81 min, directed by: Christos Passalis – Austrian premiere
The full program of the Tribute section will be announced at a later date.
 
A striking performance by Angeliki Papoulia is the jittery, beating heart of A BLAST, with her Maria a passionate and open soul who embraces life and love, but finds that passion beaten out of her by a variety of circumstances. (Mark Adams, screendaily.com)

Papoulia was born in Athens in 1975 and is a key protagonist of Greek cinema and theater. Over the years, there have been several opportunities when her work could be seen on the screens of CROSSING EUROPE, which is why the festival team is especially delighted to be able to welcome her to Linz for the anniversary edition and give the audience the opportunity to become thoroughly acquainted with her multifaceted work.

Papoulia completed her education at the Department of Theatre Studies at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and at the Empros Theatre Drama School, also in Athens. She is a co-founder of blitz theatre group. Her engagements as an actor, writer, and co-director have not been limited to Greece, but include numerous prestigious theaters throughout Europe. In addition to her own artistic work, she has been a jury member at several European film festivals, including the Locarno Film Festival and Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.

As an actress, Angeliki Papoulia has left a mark on numerous works by exponents of the younger generation of Greek directors, who use unconventional and subversive narratives to deal with the socio-political and economic problems of Greece and Europe. She has repeatedly portrayed leading roles in the internationally multi-award-winning works of director Yorgos Lanthimos (DOGTOOTH, ALPS, THE LOBSTER) that, with their whimsical plot elements and disturbing humor, are rated as major contributions to the so-called “Greek Weird Wave”. For her portrayal of the older daughter in DOGTOOTH, where a parental couple educates their three grown-up children in isolation from the world outside according to bizarre rules, she received the Award for Best Actress at the 2009 Sarajevo Film Festival. The film was also awarded a prize at the Cannes Film Festival in the same year and was nominated for an Academy Award in the “Best Foreign Language Film” category in 2011. Another longstanding collaboration connects the actress to Syllas Tzoumerkas, a frequent guest at CROSSING EUROPE (A BLAST, THE MIRACLE OF THE SARGASSO SEA, THE CITY AND THE CITY). In 2020, Papoulia was awarded Best Actress at the Hellenic Film Academy Awards (Greek national film prize) for her role as the cursing, drinking police chief of a coastal town in THE MIRACLE OF SARGASSO SEA.

In addition to entries from each of her collaborations with Lanthimos and Tzoumerkas, Angeliki Papoulia will also present two of her latest films at CROSSING EUROPE 2023. SILENCE 6-9 (world premiere: Karlovy Vary International Film Festival 2022) stands for the continuation of another artistic synergy, namely with director and co-star Christos Passalis. Not only did Papoulia star with him in DOGTOOTH, but at CROSSING EUROPE 2022 she could also be seen in THE CITY AND THE CITY (GR, 2022), a work co-directed by Passalis and Syllas Tzoumerkas. In SILENCE 6-9, Anna (Papoulia) and Aris (Passalis) meet as strangers in a futuristic-barren city, where every evening countless antennas receive fragmentary messages from the city dwellers’ missing relatives. A fascinatingly cryptic and stylistically impressive film screened in Austria for the first time, not only as part of the Tribute program but also of the Competition Fiction section.

Helena Wittmann’s HUMAN FLOWERS OF FLESH (world premiere: Locarno Film Festival 2022) presents Papoulia’s character Ida and her crew of four in hypnotic images on a sailing trip in the Mediterranean and can certainly be interpreted as a reference to Claire Denis’s masterpiece BEAU TRAVAIL. CROSSING EUROPE will present the Upper Austrian premiere of the film. It can be seen at select art house cinemas in other provinces from February 3 (distributor: Filmgarten).