2022 festival title
2022 festival date 1liner

Smyrna, My Beloved (Smyrni moy agapimeni)

Filio Baltatzi, an elderly Greek-American woman, goes to the island of Lesvos to help the refugees. She has a secret: almost a century earlier, her family lived on the island when they themselves were refugees, fleeing Smyrna after the destruction of the city. Filio’s grandmother’s diary tells the story of the family’s turbulent history, shaped by tragic international developments. Filio is accompanied to Lesvos by her reluctant granddaughter, and different generations of women in the same family come together in space and time, through the threads of history, as past and present become one.

  • 2022, The Greek Film Festival in Berlin
YEAR:

2021

DIRECTOR(S):

Gregoris Karantinakis

WRITER(S):
Mimi Denissi, Martin Sherman
PRODUCER(S):
Dionyssis Samiotis
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER(S):
Joseph Samaan, Mimi Denissi
Cinematographer:
Simos Sarketzis
MUSIC:
Andreas Katsigiannis
CAST:
Mimi Denissi, Leonidas Kakouris, Giannis Vogiatzis, Krateros Katsoulis, Burak Hakki, Katerina Geronikolou, Anastasia Pantousi, Jane Lapotaire, Susan Hampshire, Rupert Graves, Daphne Alexander
RUNTIME:

120 minutes

COUNTRY:

Greece

PREMIERE:

LA Premiere

category:

About the director

Grigoris Karantinakis is a theater, film, and television director. He has degrees from the Stavrakos Film School and the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography, and he has taught film and acting since 2003. From 2011 to 2015, he was the general manager of the Greek Film Center. His feature film Chariton’s Choir (2005) won multiple awards at festivals around the world.