Ελλάδα
From sweltering Athenian apartments to Aegean islands in August, from the crisis years to the present. The most electrically alive national cinema in Europe right now.
Matchbox — Σπιρτόκουτο 2002 · Yannis Economides · Hellenic Film Academy · Best Film ⭐⭐⭐⭐½
A grumpy middle-aged man in Athens is having a hard time with his business partner and a hell of a time with his family. It sounds like a setup for domestic comedy but it isn’t — Economides traps you in a sweltering apartment, strips away every comfort, and refuses to let you look away. The film that announced him and changed Greek cinema in one move. People who resemble matches: too much friction, too little space. One spark is all it takes.
Soul Kicking — Η Ψυχή στο Στόμα 2006 · Yannis Economides · Cannes · Critics’ Week ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Takis is trapped. Takis tries to escape. Takis wants money. He’s got a family, a baby, a home. Takis is being cheated. He loves her and suffers. His boss tops them all. Takis has run out of time. A portrait of a working-class man being crushed from every direction at once, with nowhere left to go and no language left except rage. It doesn’t let you rest because Takis can’t.
Eden Is West — Εδέμ στη Δύση 2009 · Costa-Gavras ⭐⭐⭐⭐
A young man washes up on a Greek resort island after his smuggling boat is raided by the coast guard. A magician at the resort invites him to look him up in Paris — and from that moment, Paris becomes his mythical destination. Costa-Gavras takes a lighter touch here: a Chaplinesque modern Odyssey that crosses contemporary Europe through its back doors. What the film understands is that for those without papers, the continent that calls itself a home of civilization is mostly a series of walls.
Knifer — Μαχαιροβγάλτης 2010 · Yannis Economides · 7 Hellenic Film Academy Awards ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Following his father’s death, Nikos leaves the provinces to work in Athens guarding his brutish uncle’s dogs. Shot in black and white, suffocating in atmosphere — the power dynamic shifts when his uncle’s wife draws closer to him, and what follows is a vicious circle of envy, lust, and the struggle for dominance in a household held together by resentment. Where Matchbox screams, Knifer suffocates. Won seven Hellenic Film Academy Awards including Best Film, Best Director, Best Screenplay.
Stratos — Το Μικρό Ψάρι 2014 · Yannis Economides · Berlin · Nominee Golden Bear · Hellenic Film Academy · 7 Wins ⭐⭐⭐⭐
An ex-con works nights in a bread factory and days as a hitman, saving money to free his imprisoned friend. Then he learns his loyalty has been exploited. Shot in stark black and white, with a stillness that makes the violence land harder. Closer to Melville than anything Greek cinema had produced before it. The central performance by Vangelis Mourikis is extraordinary: a man who has reduced himself to function, discovering too late that he had something worth protecting.
Chevalier 2015 · Athina Rachel Tsangari · Best Film · Hellenic Film Academy ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Six men on a fishing trip in the Aegean Sea spontaneously agree to a competition: whoever is judged best at everything by the end of the trip wins a chevalier ring. Everything becomes a metric — sleep quality, cholesterol levels, phone manner, erection firmness. Tsangari’s absurdist masterpiece is the funniest and most precise film about masculinity I have seen. It doesn’t argue a thesis; it simply observes, with anthropological patience, how men behave when status is the only currency.
Amerika Square — Πλατεία Αμερικής 2016 · Yannis Sakaridis · Best Film · Thessaloniki Film Festival ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Three stories set in Athens during the height of the Greek crisis — a far-right nationalist who logs immigrant arrivals in his building, a Syrian refugee trying to survive the city’s bureaucratic maze, and an African immigrant caught between both worlds. Sakaridis refuses easy villains and easy heroes. The nationalist is pathetic before he is dangerous; the refugees are people before they are symbols. A city that had run out of patience for everyone including itself.
Suntan 2016 · Argyris Papadimitropoulos · Hellenic Film Academy · Best Film · Best Director ⭐⭐⭐⭐
A 40-year-old doctor arrives on the small island of Antiparos to run the local clinic. Winter: empty, quiet, manageable. Then summer arrives with its crowds, its bodies, its noise — and a young tourist who lets him tag along with her group. He doesn’t chase her so much as get swept away. The locals watch. The mayor smiles. The island has seen this before. One of the most uncomfortable portraits of male delusion in recent Greek cinema.
Smuggling Hendrix — Αναζητώντας τον Χέντριξ 2018 · Marios Piperides · Hellenic Film Academy · Best Screenplay ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Washed-up musician Yiannis is finally leaving crisis-ridden Cyprus for a better life abroad — until his dog, Jimi, escapes across the UN buffer zone into the Turkish-occupied north. To get him back, Yiannis must navigate a bureaucratic and political absurdity that the island has lived with for forty years. Funny, warm, and quietly furious. The best Cypriot film I have seen.
Ballad for a Pierced Heart — Η Μπαλάντα της Τρύπιας Καρδιάς 2019 · Yannis Economides · Hellenic Film Academy · 18 Nominations · 1 Win ⭐⭐⭐⭐
In a small Greek town, amorous passion collides with greed and the bodies start piling up. Economides’ most operatic film — loud, dark, blackly comic, and completely committed to its own internal logic. The tone shifts between farce and tragedy without warning. Not for everyone. But if you surrender to it, there is something genuinely wild and alive here that Greek cinema rarely permits itself. Became a surprise box office hit in Greece despite — or because of — its refusal to behave.
Behind the Haystacks — Πίσω από τις Θημωνιές 2021 · Asimina Proedrou · Best Film · Thessaloniki Film Festival ⭐⭐⭐⭐
A tragic incident on Greece’s northern border befalls a local family of three. Proedrou’s debut is restrained in a way that takes real confidence: no music manipulating your emotions, no dramatic confrontations, just the slow accumulation of consequence. A film about the weight of a decision and who ends up carrying it — and how long. One of the most assured Greek debuts in years.
Broken Vein — Σπασμένη Φλέβα 2025 · Yannis Economides ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Thomas is a businessman drowning in debt, cornered by a loan shark, with days left to save his home. The crisis taught him nothing — he doubles down on his vices, surrounds himself with enablers, and lives under the sincere conviction that his struggle is heroic. Economides’ most politically charged film is really a portrait of a specific Greek masculine pathology: the man who mistakes stubbornness for dignity and self-destruction for resistance. A modern tragedy rooted in hubris.
Patty Is a Very Girly Name — Πολύ Κοριτσίστικο Όνομα το Πάττυ 2025 · Nikos Pastras · Berlin · Official Selection · Thessaloniki · Best Greek Film · Best Feature Film ⭐⭐⭐⭐½
Daphne is a teenage judo athlete from a remote Greek island who follows her sensei to Athens in pursuit of her Olympic dream. He has been absent from competitive judo for years and is searching for something he can’t name. Pastras makes a film that is part sports drama, part coming-of-age story, and entirely its own thing — quiet, assured, and genuinely moving in its final act. One of the best Greek films of recent years, and the one that surprised me most.