Montreal Greek Film Festival celebrates its 10th Edition

The Montreal Greek Film Festival is celebrating its 10th edition, offering people a chance to dive into the best of contemporary Greek cinema. What started as a weekend event has grown into nearly 20 days of films across four theaters, attracting over 4,000 attendees. This year, the festival is featuring screenwriter Katerina Bei, at Cinéma du Musée on Monday, to unveil the making of multi-award movie My Name is Eftihia, which is returning to the festival following its popular success.

“This movie we played it a few years ago and it was a tremendous success but we could only play it once because it just couldn’t fit into the film festival scheduling. We usually try and play films a couple of times so everyone can see them and it was sold out obviously and we wanted people to come back and see it and a lot of people were telling us can you bring this movie back, can you bring this movie back and normally in a film festival we only show the latest hits,” said John Caoussias, Montreal Greek Film Festival Director.

The story behind the 2019 film My Name is Eftihia –meaning happiness– inspired the festival director to launch a retrospective night, offering audiences a chance to revisit standout films from past editions.

Katerina Bei also wrote Fonissa (Murderess), another film featured at the festival.

“It is based on a very popular novel called The Murderess and it speaks about a woman that she thinks it is better to die than to live as a woman. So she murders young female babies and she thinks that this is God’s will. She thinks that she is doing very good,” said Bei.

“I’m very proud that although it’s an Art movie, people liked it a lot and became a box office. That is very rare in Greece Art movies to be very popular and commercial as well.”

“It was Greece’s biggest hit so obviously we’d like to see it here in Montreal,” said Caoussias.

“We won’t be able to see it on DVDs or VHSs like we used to do, the big platforms like Netflix or Apple won’t pick them up so only through the film festival will they be able to see some of these movies that are coming now from Greece.”

“We continue with a couple of other screenings during the week and then we also have parallel to the film festival, we’re showing some children’s films, some animated films in Greek for the Greek children here in Montreal that go to the Socrates educational schools,” said the Festival’s director.

“Those kinds of festivals and the films that are projected, they blend the old and the new, and they celebrate our heritage, and make us all feel closer,” said The Consul General Of Greece, Katerina Varvarigou.

All films include English subtitles, and the festival runs until November 30th. Tickets are available on Montreal Greek Film Festival website.