Mari Gulbiani’s The Crossroad, a Georgian feature in post-production, and Angela Dimeska’s They Bloom at Dawn, a North Macedonian project in development, have won the top prizes at the Agora, the industry section of the 67th Thessaloniki International Film Festival. The awards were presented at Warehouse C on Wednesday 11 November, and the festival published the full list the following day.
The Agora handed out 18 awards across three strands: the Crossroads Co-production Forum, for fiction projects in development with ties to the Mediterranean and Southeastern Europe; Agora Works in Progress, for films in post-production; and Agora Series Talents, a new programme for series writers. Only six of the 18 carry cash, €32,000 ($35,600) in all. The rest are post-production and consultancy services, scholarships, mentoring and places at other markets. For the winners, the difference is practical: cash goes into the finance plan, while services take specific lines out of the budget.
Key facts
- Works in Progress top prize: The Crossroad (Mari Gulbiani; produced by Kate Kalandarishvili, Midifilm; Georgia), post-production services from Two Thirty-Five (2|35)
- Crossroads top prize: They Bloom at Dawn (Angela Dimeska; produced by Ognen Antov, Dream Factory; North Macedonia), image post-production from Frenel Post Lab
- 18 awards in all; six in cash, worth €32,000, of which Greek projects took €18,000
- Biggest cash winner: Sofia Georgovassili’s Greek-Romanian Mignon, with €13,000 from the Onassis Film Award and the EKKOMED award
- All three Arab-world projects at the forum won, taking five of its ten awards; eight of the 14 forum projects won at least one
The two top prizes
Variety, which reported the winners on 12 November, describes The Crossroad as Gulbiani’s fiction debut: a road movie about a young Muslim woman whose husband vanishes soon after their wedding. She sets out with her mother-in-law to find him and learns that he has gone to Syria to join Islamic State. The Works in Progress jury (the producer Maria Drandaki of Homemade Films, Wouter Jansen of the sales company Square Eyes and Gabriela Trujillo, a programmer at the Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes) praised its “documentary-inspired perspective on the resilience of those women left behind by men, war, and religion”. The prize is post-production work from Two Thirty-Five.
They Bloom at Dawn, Dimeska’s first feature, follows a young woman who takes refuge in her grandparents’ lakeside village and is drawn into her widowed grandmother’s fight to save the threatened lake. The Crossroads jury, made up of the producers Ioanna Bolomyti of Atalante Productions, Fred Burle of One Two Films and Linda Mutawi of Fikra, gave it the Frenel Post Lab award for image post-production and called it “a project that has a strong visual potential and a story that will resonate across borders”. Dimeska and her producer, Ognen Antov of Dream Factory, brought the project to Thessaloniki through the Midpoint Institute.
Where the money went
Four of the six cash prizes are open only to Greek projects, and Greek projects took €18,000 ($20,000) of the €32,000. The biggest winner was Mignon, which Variety describes as a 1990s-set story of two teenage girls on a visit to the Athens department store of the title. It collected the €10,000 ($11,100) Onassis Film Award and the €3,000 ($3,300) Works in Progress award from EKKOMED, €13,000 ($14,500) in total. Foss Productions and Plays2place produce it, with Luna Film of Romania and MagentaTV as co-producers. Panagiotis Charamis’s Avanos, which the jury praised for its “energetic reimagining of the Western genre”, won €2,000 ($2,200) from the public broadcaster ERT, and Finos Film gave €3,000 to Koukitsa, a folklore-rooted project by Christina Koutsospyrou and Aran Hughes.
Outside the Greek-only awards, the largest cheque was the €8,000 ($8,900) script development award from France’s Centre national du cinéma et de l’image animée (CNC). It went to Ayman El Amir’s Egyptian satire A Pair of Shoes in the Dark Corner of the Moon, produced by Nada Riyadh of Felucca Films. The €6,000 ($6,700) ArteKino International Award, judged by Remi Burah, chief executive of Arte France Cinéma, went to Gözde Kural’s Turkish-German In Those Darkest Nights, produced by Titus Kreyenberg of unafilm. Kural’s project also shared the Mediterranean Film Institute’s workshop scholarship with Isabella Rinaldi’s Italian Fuoristagione.
All three Arab-world projects won
Three of the forum’s 14 projects came from the Arab world. All three won, and between them they took five of the forum’s ten awards. Besides the CNC prize, Riyadh won the festival’s scholarship to the EAVE Marketing Workshop in Luxembourg in 2027. Sarra Ben Hassen, producer of Houcem Slouli’s Tunisian project A Touch of Paradise, won accreditation to the Producers Network at the next Marché du Film in Cannes.
Yumna Marwan’s This Is Not a Set, produced by Rula Nasser of Imaginarium Films and listed by the festival as a Lebanese-Jordanian project, won twice: a place at the Sofia Meetings market in March 2027 and the Greener Screen consultancy on sustainable production. The festival values that package at €7,000 ($7,800), but it comes as services, not cash, and is not counted in the €32,000. Basam Alassad, Greener Screen’s chief content officer, said the team stood out for its commitment to greener filmmaking “despite the challenges of shooting in Lebanon”.
The forum jury also backed Patrick Tass’s The Arab of Your Dreams, a Belgian project about queer Arab masculinity produced by Annabella Nezri of Kwassa Films, with a script consultancy from the Midpoint Institute. On the same night in Rome, Ashgan El-Hamus’s Al Baraneya won best film at the MedFilm Festival.
Full list of winners
Crossroads Co-production Forum, jury awards
- Frenel Post Lab Post-Production Award (image post-production services): They Bloom at Dawn, Angela Dimeska; Ognen Antov, Dream Factory (North Macedonia)
- CNC Award (€8,000, script development): A Pair of Shoes in the Dark Corner of the Moon, Ayman El Amir; Nada Riyadh, Felucca Films (Egypt)
- ArteKino International Award (€6,000): In Those Darkest Nights, Gözde Kural; Titus Kreyenberg, unafilm (Turkey, Germany)
- Finos Film Award (€3,000, Greek project): Koukitsa, Christina Koutsospyrou and Aran Hughes; Jacob Moe, Archipelago Network (Greece)
- Producers Network – Marché du Film Award (accreditation to the next Marché du Film): Sarra Ben Hassen, producer of A Touch of Paradise (Tunisia)
- Midpoint Consulting Award (online script consultancy): The Arab of Your Dreams, Patrick Tass; Annabella Nezri, Kwassa Films (Belgium)
Crossroads Co-production Forum, independent awards
- Greener Screen Consultancy Award (sustainability services valued at €7,000): This Is Not a Set, Yumna Marwan; Rula Nasser, Imaginarium Films (Lebanon, Jordan)
- Sofia Meetings Award (place at Sofia Meetings, March 2027): This Is Not a Set, Yumna Marwan
- Mediterranean Film Institute “George Kalogeropoulos” Award (Script 2 Film workshop scholarship, shared): Fuoristagione, Isabella Rinaldi; Joana de Freitas Ginori, Ulalà Film & Co. (Italy), and In Those Darkest Nights, Gözde Kural
- Thessaloniki EAVE Marketing Workshop Scholarship 2027: Nada Riyadh, producer of A Pair of Shoes in the Dark Corner of the Moon (Egypt)
Agora Works in Progress, jury awards
- Two Thirty-Five (2|35) Award (post-production services): The Crossroad, Mari Gulbiani; Kate Kalandarishvili, Midifilm (Georgia)
- 119 Marvila Studios Award (sound mixing services): The Law of the Flies, Tunahan Kurt; Zeynep Ekmekci, Faro (Turkey)
- Agora Works in Progress Award by EKKOMED (€3,000, Greek project): Mignon, Sofia Georgovassili; Antigone Rota and Stelios Cotionis, Foss Productions, and Vasilis Chrysanthopoulos, Plays2place, with Irina Malcea-Candea, Luna Film, and Faye Tsitsipi, MagentaTV (Greece, Romania)
- ERT Agora Works in Progress Award (€2,000, Greek project): Avanos, Panagiotis Charamis; Alexis Tsoukalas, Pan Entertainment (Greece)
- Neaniko Plano Subtitling Award (subtitling services): Río Masacre, Sylvie Weber; Anouk Shad, Ripe, with Lukas Rinner, Nabis Filmgroup (Austria)
Agora Works in Progress, independent award
- Onassis Film Award (€10,000, Greek project): Mignon, Sofia Georgovassili
Agora Series Talents
- Crew United Award (five-year premium membership): Selini Papageorgiou, for Heavy
- Heart of the Project Mentoring Award (two mentoring sessions): Matina Galatsianou, for Ahinos
Our reading
Measured in cash, the Agora is modest: six awards, €32,000, and the largest cheque reserved for a Greek film. Its weight lies in access. The prizes that went to the Egyptian, Tunisian and Lebanese-Jordanian projects (a Cannes market badge, a Sofia Meetings slot, an EAVE workshop place and development money from the CNC) are introductions to the European markets and funds where these films will look for co-producers next. For a producer in Cairo, Tunis or Amman, those introductions can be worth more than the cheque.
The festival closes on 15 November with May el-Toukhy’s Woman Unknown. Our festival preview has the full programme and all 14 Crossroads projects; more results are on our festival awards page. Dollar figures use the European Central Bank rate of 11 November, $1.1127 to the euro.
Sources
- Thessaloniki International Film Festival, The Agora Awards of the 67th TIFF (12 November 2026), full list with juries and citations
- Thessaloniki International Film Festival, Crossroads Co-production Forum page (award terms)
- Thessaloniki International Film Festival, Agora Works in Progress page (award terms)
- Variety, Thessaloniki industry awards: The Crossroad, They Bloom at Dawn take top prizes (12 November 2026)
- Cineuropa, Thessaloniki’s Agora hands out its awards (12 November 2026)