L’heure d’hiver 2024 – ATHÈNES

For its sixth edition of l’Heure d’Hiver, Cinéma Galeries, in partnership with the Thessaloniki International Film Festival, Bozar, Cinéma Aventure, Pink Screens Film Festival, Cinemamed, From Brussels to Athens with Love, and Tropismes, has chosen to highlight ATHENS.
The cradle of democracy is much more than what some history books might suggest. In a constant flux between the old and the new, its inhabitants create, layer by layer, the city of the future. Those who have visited Athens can easily recognize its density, which is also reflected in the countless stories and events that characterize Athens. In a city undergoing significant change, residents assert their right to the city. As the first Orthodox country to legalize marriage for all, the LGBTQ+ community can celebrate a victory. Despite significant precarity, various solidarity groups and squats strive to secure housing rights and a decent life for all.
Through documentaries, contemporary films and restored classics, L’HEURE D’HIVER ATHENS explores the ways in which the city’s residents make urban space their own. For Dany and Odysseas in Xenia, Athens is the starting point of their quest for identity, while it becomes the creative inspiration for Nikitas in The Summer with Carmen. In Days and Nights with Demetra K, Eva Stefani sketches an Athens affected by the recent financial crisis through the portrait of Dimitra, president of the union of sex workers in Greece.

L’Heure d’Hiver Athens will also focus on the committed aspect of contemporary Greek cinema, which bears witness to major events and realities, such as the cruel murders of Shahzad Luqman, Pavlos Fyssas and Zak Kostopoulos in Grief, Those Who Remain, or the fight to defend the Exarcheia district in Nous n’avons pas peur des ruines.

The festival also brings us together around Greek cinematic history, notably with O Drakos (1956), a pivotal film in its representation
of the working classes. The dictatorship of the colonels in the 1970s forced Greek directors to get round censorship through symbolic abstraction: New Greek Cinema then triumphed with Theo Angelopoulos (Athens, Return to the Acropolis – 1983) and others.
Led by a young generation of directors such as Yorgos Lanthimos, the 2000s saw a new cinematic wave: the weird wave. This style unfolds a deliberately abrupt, dark, and subversive aesthetic, as seen in Alps.
This new generation is also reflected in films revealing social dynamics, such as Park by Sofia Exarchou, which sheds light on the consequences of the economic crisis, or Broadway by Christos Massalas, an ode to otherness and the search for a better future.

As part of the festival, Yanis Stefanou organizes an exhibition bringing together various Greek artists interested in gentrification and the lived realities, both personal and political, in Athens.