The 67th Thessaloniki Film Festival opens on Thursday 5 November with Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Minotaur, the Grand Prix winner at Cannes this year, and closes on 15 November with May el-Toukhy’s Venice Golden Lion winner Woman Unknown. The Thessaloniki International Film Festival will screen 258 films in its cinemas and a further 58 on its online platform. Its industry section, the Agora, runs from 6 to 14 November and has picked 14 projects from 15 countries for its 22nd Crossroads Co-production Forum. The festival presented the programme at simultaneous press conferences in Thessaloniki and Athens on 29 October.
Key facts
- Dates: 5–15 November 2026; 258 films in cinemas and 58 on the festival’s online platform; ticket presales open on 3 November
- Opening film Minotaur (Andrey Zvyagintsev); closing film Woman Unknown (May el-Toukhy)
- Main competition, Arrivals: 10 films, three of them Greek, for the Golden Alexander “Theo Angelopoulos” and €10,000 (about $11,200)
- Agora (6–14 November): 14 projects at the Crossroads Co-production Forum, with cash awards including the €10,000 Onassis Film Award, €8,000 from France’s CNC and €6,000 from ArteKino
- European Film Awards nominations are announced in Thessaloniki on 14 November
The Greek deputy culture minister Iasonas Fotilas, speaking at the launch, tied the festival’s standing to the government’s production push, citing what he called “the government’s determination to invest 750 million in the sector and its people through the Greece on Screen program” alongside the festival’s “artistic prestige” in talks with the European Film Academy, Cannes and France. The festival is led by its director, Orestis Andreadakis. Screenings take place at the Olympion and Pavlos Zannas cinemas, four halls at the port and the Makedonikon.
The competitions and the prize money
Thessaloniki runs four international competitions with cash prizes. The main one, Arrivals, has 10 films, three of them Greek. They compete for the Golden Alexander “Theo Angelopoulos” for best film, worth €10,000 (about $11,200), and the Silver Alexander for best direction, worth €5,000 (about $5,600), as well as best actor and best actress awards. The jury may also give a best screenplay or best artistic achievement award. According to Deadline, which calls the section the International Competition, the jury is Gaia Furrer, artistic director of Giornate degli Autori in Venice, the Greek writer and filmmaker Achilleas Kyriakidis and the producer Jack Tarling.
The Arrivals line-up, as published by Deadline on 19 October:
- Brave New Love (Maria Bäck; Denmark, Sweden, Greece)
- If I Go Will They Miss Me (Walter Thompson-Hernández; US)
- Les Indes (Pauline Julier, Nicolas Chapoulier; Switzerland, Spain)
- Stand Up (Mari Sanders; Netherlands, Greece)
- The Incomer (Louis Paxton; UK)
- The Riverbank (Enock Carvalho, Matheus Farias; Brazil, Germany)
- Too Many Beasts (Sarah Arnold; France)
- A Day in the Life of Jo: Chapter Phaedra (Jacqueline Lentzou; Greece, Germany, France)
- A Whole Person Almost (Efthimis Kosemund Sanidis; Greece, Bulgaria, Germany, Cyprus, Romania)
- Titanic Ocean (Konstantina Kotzamani; Greece, Germany, Romania, Spain, Japan)
If I Go Will They Miss Me, starring Danielle Brooks, premiered at Sundance this year. The regional competition, Meet the Neighbors+, has 11 films, two of them Greek and two Cypriot, competing for the Golden Alexander “Michel Dimopoulos” (€10,000) and a €5,000 Silver Alexander. The >>Film Forward section has 10 films, two of them Greek, with the same €10,000 and €5,000 prizes. The Mermaid award carries €3,000 (about $3,400). Eight works compete in the Immersive section for a €2,000 (about $2,200) Golden Alexander, and seven films from the Smart7 festival network compete for a €5,000 award. The Alpha Bank Accessibility Award, worth €3,000, is given for the fifth time, and eight podcasts compete for a €2,000 prize. Euro conversions use the European Central Bank rate of 30 October, $1.1172 to the euro.
Agora and the Crossroads projects
The Agora, which the festival bills as the largest industry event in southeastern Europe, runs in person and online with support from the EU’s Creative Europe MEDIA programme, and focuses on southeastern Europe and the Mediterranean. Thanos Stavropoulos, who coordinated the Agora and worked on the international programme, has taken over as head of Agora, and Angeliki Vergou becomes its adviser for international collaborations and development. The actor, writer and director Christopher Papakaliatis, whose Maestro in Blue was the first Greek series acquired by Netflix for worldwide distribution, is this year’s ambassador.
The 14 projects at the Crossroads Co-production Forum, with director and lead producer:
- A Pair of Shoes in the Dark Corner of the Moon (Ayman El Amir; Nada Riyadh, Felucca Films; Egypt)
- The Arab of Your Dreams (Patrick Tass; Annabella Nezri, Kwassa Films; Belgium; a Mediterranean Film Institute project)
- A Touch of Paradise (Houcem Slouli; Sarra Ben Hassen, Instinct bleu, and Khaled Henchiri, Upper Echlon; Tunisia)
- Boys of Summer (Emilios Avraam; Marinos Charalambous, Boycott Films, and Tonia Mishiali, Bark Like a Cat Films; Cyprus)
- Fuoristagione (Isabella Rinaldi; Joana de Freitas Ginori, Ulalà Film & Co.; Italy)
- In Those Darkest Nights (Gözde Kural; Titus Kreyenberg, unafilm; Türkiye, Germany; a Sofia Meetings project)
- Koukitsa (Christina Koutsospyrou, Aran Hughes; Jacob Moe, Archipelago Network; Greece)
- Lava Love (Steve Krikris; Nicholas Alavanos and Stelios Mavrodontis, Filmiki, with Zik Zak Filmworks; Greece, Iceland)
- Petroli (Gemma Blasco; Mireia Graell Vivancos, Ringo Media; Spain)
- Religion of Night Walks (Nikola Ležaić; Siniša Juričić, Nukleus film, with Baš Čelik and Growing Stories; Croatia, Serbia, Denmark)
- Tettix (Stella Serefoglou; Alexandros Tiliopoulos, Open Borders Productions, with Mayana Films; Greece, Germany)
- The Last Angel of Beirut (Valentin Noujaïm; Manon Messiant, Iliade et films; France)
- They Bloom at Dawn (Angela Dimeska; Ognen Antov, Dream Factory; North Macedonia; a Midpoint Institute project)
- This Is Not a Set (Yumna Marwan; Rula Nasser, Imaginarium Films; Jordan)
The forum’s jury awards include €8,000 (about $8,900) for script development from the Centre national du cinéma et de l’image animée (CNC), France’s film body, the €6,000 (about $6,700) ArteKino International Award, €3,000 from Finos Film for a Greek project, post-production services from Frenel Post Lab, accreditation to the Marché du Film’s Producers Network and a Midpoint script consultancy. Independent awards include the Onassis Film Award of €10,000 (about $11,200) for a Greek project in the forum or the Agora’s works in progress, a green-production consultancy from Greener Screen, a place at the Sofia Meetings, a Mediterranean Film Institute scholarship and a place on EAVE’s 2027 marketing workshop. The jury is made up of Ioanna Bolomyti of Atalante Productions in Greece, Fred Burle of One Two Films in Germany and Linda Mutawi of Fikra in Sweden, with Remi Burah, chief executive of Arte France Cinéma, judging the ArteKino prize. Three Greek projects from the shortlist, Beast, Graceland and The Passed Pawn, also get consultation meetings through the Agora’s Focus sessions.
Tributes, guests and Greek films
The Galician director Oliver Laxe, whose Sirât shared the jury prize at Cannes in 2025, is guest curator of a tribute called Welcome to the Desert. He chose 17 films and will give a public talk, and an audiovisual installation produced by Madrid’s Reina Sofía Museum goes on show at the MOMus Experimental Center for the Arts. The Greek director Nikos Grammatikos receives an honorary Golden Alexander with a complete retrospective, including the first big-screen showing of Exodos (1995) from the ERT archive. The composer Stavros Xarchakos receives a Golden Alexander for his contribution to culture, with a screening of Costas Ferris’s Rembetiko.
There is also a retrospective of the Turkish director Emin Alper, from Beyond the Hill to Salvation, which won the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize in Berlin, a Balkan Horror strand within Meet the Neighbors+ and a spotlight on the film theorist Laura Mulvey, curated with Georgia Korossi of the British Film Institute. Other guests include Fatih Akin, who presents his new film, Claes Bang, Trine Dyrholm, the filmmaker Sara Driver and the editor Yorgos Mavropsaridis.
The Greek programme has 26 features and 28 shorts, including a restored print of Maria Plyta’s Eva (1953) and the avant-première of Alexis Alexiou’s Sea of Glass. The series strand includes Lord of the Flies and Dear England, alongside the Greek series Project Odysseus (Magenta TV) and Seas Between Us (ERT and ERTFLIX).
The European Film Academy announces its nominations for the European Film Awards at the festival on 14 November, broadcast from the Pavlos Zannas cinema at noon. The 2027 ceremony will be held in Greece.
Thessaloniki follows a run of autumn festivals in the region and beyond, from Antalya’s Golden Orange, where Minotaur won the international jury’s special award, to Ji.hlava and Seminci.
Our reading
Thessaloniki opens and closes with films that have already won top prizes this year, Cannes’ Grand Prix and Venice’s Golden Lion. The newer business is in the Agora, where 14 projects, most of them from the Arab world, the Balkans and southern Europe, are chasing co-producers, and Greek projects compete for prizes reserved for them.
Sources
- Thessaloniki International Film Festival, 67th TIFF: Discover the full lineup (29 October 2026)
- Thessaloniki International Film Festival, 67th TIFF: Christopher Papakaliatis is the Agora ambassador (22 October 2026, includes Crossroads Co-production Forum selection)
- Deadline, Thessaloniki Sets 2026 International Competition (October 2026)
- pttl, 67th Thessaloniki Film Festival: 258 films, major guests and the full 2026 lineup (29 October 2026)
- Festival de Cannes, The 78th Festival de Cannes winners' list (24 May 2025)