A postcard from The Fourth Evia Project

Mamma Mia! How could we resist it? It was standing room only at the Apollon open air cinema in Edipsos Photo: Courtesy of Thessaloniki Film Festival

In the four years since a wildfire ripped across the northern part of the Greek island of Evia in 2021, taking with it hundreds of thousands of acres of trees, reforestation has been industrious alongside steps to hopefully prevent such devastating fires in the future. Thessaloniki Film Festival, with support from the Greek Ministry of Culture, has also been busily at work cultivating the seeds of cultural recovery, hosting its five-day green initiative, The Evia Project each year since.

The fourth edition just wrapped up last night and, after attending last year, it is obvious that the event, like the trees, is starting to put down strong roots. Screenings at the open-air Apollon cinema in Edipsos, which was renovated especially for the project, were fuller than ever, so it was standing room only for the opening crowdpleaser, Mamma Mia and the closer Stelios, a biopic about the life of Greek national treasure musician Stelios Kazantzidis, which has proved a record breaker at the domestic box office.

Nikos Kavoukidis Photo: Courtesy of Thessaloniki Film Festival

The project has sustainability at its heart and this year turned the microscope on notions of “filming the Greek summer”. Holding this up to the bright June light, proved to reveal its positive and negative facets. As Artistic Director Orestis Andreadakis put it in his opening speech: “Welcome to Northern Evia. To a place where summer becomes a living memory, a care, a refuge. To a place that has, for centuries, been healing – not only bodies, but also souls. Today, here, we are not merely kicking off a festival. We are starting a dialogue. A dialogue between past and future, art and nature, humanity and the world that hosts it. A dialogue profoundly necessary, almost existential in nature. Because sustainability – a term that we hear more and more, but often lacking in depth – here acquires new meaning and dons a face, in the land that nourishes us, in the sea that unites us, in the tree that did not burn.

“That is why our central theme is summer. And more precisely, the Greek summer that warms us, enchants us, yet also burns. The Greek summer that is accompanied by carefreeness, but also remembrance. The joy brought about by gathering together, but also the responsibility that comes with our presence in a place, this place. Because summer can no longer be taken for granted. Just like anything else these days. That is why we are here. To remember, to speak, to feel. To once again imagine a world where beauty lies not only in the visual, but in coexistence. I urge you to spend these days together not only as spectators, but as fellow life companions. Welcome to a Greek summer that also yearns for a future.”

I’m not quite sure why I’ve never had the opportunity – or, admittedly, the inclination – to watch Mamma Mia! before but I can tell you that an open-air cinema by the sea is the perfect place to catch Phyllida Lloyd’s frothy confection, which blows through Abba’s back catalogue like a summer breeze and sees Meryl Streep, Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth, Stellan Skarsgård, Julie Walters, Amanda Seyfried and the rest all enjoying themselves enormously.

While locals are confined to a Greek chorus, of sorts, this is still a celebration of the warmth of weather and spirit that attracts so many tourists here year on year.

Jenny Jenny - a Greek-set film shot with a Greek lens Photo: Courtesy of Thessaloniki Film Festival

Evia, to a Brit at least, feels as though it’s a gem hiding in plain sight. Only a couple of hours or so from Athens, its chief tourist cohort are from the Balkans coupled with Athenians themselves who head out for the weekend or to have a paddle in the hot spring waters that attracted the great and the good, including Greta Garbo and Jackie Onassis, back in the day. Away from the springs, the sea itself is deliciously cold, offering respite from heat which is already starting to reach boiling point.

The rise in temperature – not least the number of “tropical nights” when the temperature doesn’t dip below 20C – was just one of the subjects that was addressed at a fascinating, and periodically frightening symposium in Limni on Filming the Greek Summer - Light and Myths, Stereotypes and Challenges.

First Konstantinos Kartalis, Professor of Environmental and Climate Physics at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and member of the European Union's Scientific Committee on Climate Change, laid the issues out for us. His interesting talk highlighted not just the problem of global warming and what we might do to combat it but the ways in which humans are exacerbating the issue by putting too much concrete in the wrong places and working against rather than with the landscape. Examples given included the seven-storey buildings built in Thessaloniki which stop the wind and what we might consider nature’s ‘air conditioning’. He also noted the way that the climate crisis disproportionately affects the poor.

The notion of over-tourism was also touched upon, which was something that has also had a knock-on effect on directors who are trying to shoot there. The discussion widened out to feature contributions from Argyris Papadimitropoulos, who directed Suntan and Sofia Exarchou, who helmed Animal (both shown at the project), alongside cinematographer Simos Sarketzis (Winona). Papadimitropoulos talked about using tourists as extras but also noted the pressure they put on a space. It’s hard, for example, to be able to host a crew of 70 when an island is already fully booked up. Exarchou also noted the challenges presented by international productions also heading to Greece. While many domestic filmmakers are constrained by budget “you also have foreign productions that use every one of our technicians. They are not bothered by the cost.”

EIFF to host dance-along Mamma Mia!

Citing the shooting of Animal towards the end of the tourist season, she noted that How To Have Sex was also being shot in the same place at the same time and that both films were looking for extras. She said: “How To Have Sexwas bringing young Brits on planes. We were trying to find the one or two Brits who had remained on the island.”

This idea of foreign money being more plentiful was also noted as not being a new thing. Among the films screened this year in Edipsos was US Eighties B-movie Summer Lovers. Starring a baby-faced Daryl Hannah (in the same year she made Blade Runner) and young Peter Gallagher, the screening was preceded by a pre-recorded chat with Greek actor Vladimiros Kyriakidis, who has a small role in the film, who noted he was paid 150,000 drachmas for the part, the equivalent of what he would have received as the lead of three Greek films.

Summer Lovers, which charts a ménage à trois between Gallagher’s Michael, Cathy (Hannah) and French archeologist Lina (Valérie Quennessen), proved to be a surprisingly watchable oddity, which definitely showcases the American belief that Europeans were much more sexually active and happy with nudity than those from the US at that time. Randal Kleiser may not play up the more sapphic element of the plot but it's still there as an interesting undercurrent.

Again, however, locals were relegated to smaller roles, although Kyriakidis’ Leo Sayer-esque Yorghos – who is offering Cathy everything from his vinyl collection and what’s in his trousers to Quaaludes – makes his presence felt.

For a taste of Greek summer served up via a Greek lens, Jenny Jenny was the perfect treat. Dinos Dimopoulos’ 1966 romantic comedy sees bright young thing Jenny (Tzeni Karezi) agree to a ‘fake’ marriage to her father’s political rival Andreas (Nikos Mantas) in order to write-off her dad’s debts, only for the pair to find they are falling for one another after all. In a similar vein to Doris Day vehicles of the time, or the likes of the British Three Hats For Lisa, it is a showcase for Skoutari’s comic timing, along with a delightful character turn from Dionysis Papagiannopoulos as her dad, and for the huge array of great Sixties costumes. Someone in the UK should snap this up for a festival or two, it’s great.

The screening was preceded by an in person chat with cinematographer Nikos Kavoukidis, who said: “Greek light is harsh, and especially in color film it requires attention and precision.”

Cameras may have become lighter since then but the summers have also become hotter and longer with Papadimitropoulos saying at the symposium that splitting the shoot to avoid the hottest parts of the day in order to keep cameras cool is just one consequence.

Certainly we were all glad of the sea breeze as the symposium’s sponsor Elisabet Cruises sailed us all back to Edipsos, with many of those on board vying to recreate a Kate Winslet moment as Celine Dion’s My Heart Will Go On pumped through the sound system. Chance of an iceberg in Greece? Negligible and, indeed, even snow is thin on the ground in winter these days, which puts their aquifers at risk.

Oto's Planet, a fable with a dark heart Photo: Courtesy of Thessaloniki Film Festival

Returning to what lies beneath, I also had the chance to catch one of the VR experiences on offer back in Edipsos. I opted for Gwenael François’ Oto’s Planet – showing alongside Stefano Conca Bonizzoni’s Sweet End Of The World and Thierry Loa’s 21-22 USA – because I was curious about its interactive element. Essentially, you get to spin a planet – and occasionally pick things up from it – that is inhabited by a man called Oto and his dog/otter cross Skippy. When an astronaut named Exo arrives problems of sharing come to the fore and though it initially seems like a children’s fable with plenty of comedy (not least Oto's inventive 'swearing') the roots of the problem, so to speak, hide a dark and difficult truth that is aimed squarely at adults and the world’s geopolitics.

The Evia Project continues to branch out, also featuring a busy Agora industry programme including a masterclass with Maria Kallimani (Brando With a Glass Eye), another with Animasyros director Maria Anestopoulou, the presentation of six projects in various stages of development and a lot more besides.

It’s a pleasure to watch an event grow steady, strong and sustainably, just as it was to watch the locals and those of us who had come from further afield sing and dance – Greeks doubtless grateful the incomers were confined to the latter – to Greek classics like those of Stelios Kazantzidis long into the final night.

Symposium with Konstantinos Kartalis which raised interesting questions about climate change and filmmaking in the summer Photo: Courtesy of Thessaloniki Film Festival