

George Pelecanos Tribute at LAGFF 2023
LAGFF is proud to announce that novelist, screenwriter, film and television producer, George Pelecanos, will receive the 2023 Honorary Orpheus Award at the Festival’s Opening Night Ceremony on June 3rd on the UCLA campus in the James Bridges Theater in collaboration with the UCLA Stavros Niarchos Foundation Center for the Study of Hellenic Culture. Pelecanos’ longtime collaborator, producer and former HBO Executive, Kary Antholis, will be on hand to present the award.
On June 4th, George Pelecanos will offer a masterclass hosted by Los Angeles City College for the benefit of aspiring filmmakers and film students.
The event is produced by writer/director Fay Efrosini Lellios, a longtime collaborator of George Pelecanos and a friend of LAGFF.
George Pelecanos photo by Alexa King
Kary Antholis (Honorary Orpheus Award presenter) founded Crime Story Media, LLC in July 2019, after retiring as President of Miniseries and Cinemax Programming at HBO. Under the Crime Story banner, Antholis has served as Executive Producer on the limited series Black Bird (Apple TV+, Dennis Lehane), We Own this City (HBO, George Pelecanos, David Simon), the Emmy-nominated documentary The Slow Hustle (HBO) and the hit podcast series, Firebug and Jury Duty. In over 25 years as a creative executive at HBO, Antholis oversaw Academy Award, Emmy and Golden Globe-winning projects, including Chernobyl, Angels in America, Olive Kitteridge, John Adams, The Pacific, The Night Of. Antholis began his film career as a documentarian, winning an Academy Award and an Emmy for his film One Survivor Remembers, which was also the first HBO program added by the Librarian of Congress to the National Film Registry, an honor given to “culturally, historically or aesthetically” significant American films.
Joe Petricca (masterclass moderator) is a filmmaker, educator, and storyteller. He teaches film and directing in Los Angeles at LACC (Los Angeles City College), Art Center College of Design and Art Division. He serves as the Chief Academic Officer for the International Academy of Film and Media in Bangladesh. He has taught screenwriting and film production around the world. His screenplay, A Trip to Rome, has received two screenplay festival prizes from the 100 Screenplays Competition and the Toronto LGBTQ Festival. His treatment Rico and Rafa won the Oaxaca Film Festival in 2022. Petricca’s short film, A Meditation, starring Harold Perrineau, has played at over 35 film festivals internationally and picked up five awards. Recently, he has curated a film series Life’s Banquet: Food in Films in support of the upcoming exhibition All Consuming: Art and Essence of Food at the Norton Simon Museum. And he has guest-curated photos and videos about the Los Angeles River for the Instagram account @LARiverX. Petricca served as the Executive Vice Dean of the American Film Institute Conservatory. In 2007, Petricca received a Chevalier of the Order of Academic Palms from the French Government for contributions to French Cinema in Los Angeles. He received his BFA in Film Production from NYU and his MFA in Screenwriting from AFI, where he received the top screenwriting honor – The Program for Screenwriters Award.
Fay Efrosini Lellios (Tribute Producer) is a graduate of Boston University and the American Film Institute, Fay Lellios worked for many years at both Merchant Ivory Productions and Paramount Pictures. She has written, directed and produced several films and documentaries in the U.S., Cuba and Greece with her longtime Producer, George Pelecanos. She is currently at work on her feature comedy, Mouzo, with Co-writer/Co-director, Ersi Danou, and developing a series on famed children’s writer, Penelope Delta. Fay’s last three live-action shorts all Oscar-qualified.