WEIRD GREECE | Offscreen

Under the banner "Weird Greece", we focus on unorthodox Greek-made cinema. We take our pick of the "Greek Weird Wave’", a diffuse movement of local filmmakers that took off when the country was dangling at the edge of a financial abyss in an unprecedented economic recession. Following Yorgos Lanthimos's internationally acclaimed Dogtooth (2009), other filmmakers responded to this critical situation by tackling taboo subjects, and outlandish or even morbid elements, in stylistically innovative gems like Suntan, Pity and, from 2024, Yorgos Zois' Arcadia.  
 
Then we skip back to the 1960s and 1970s and an unprecedented explosion of bizarre B-movies and exploitation packed with gangsters, jealous lovers, vengeful wives, crazed killers and hedonistic youngsters besporting themselves on sun-drenched Aegean beaches in films with provocative titles such as The Wild Pussycat or Lust for Revenge, from directors and producers such as Kostas Karagiannis, Ilias Mylonakos or Omiros Efstratiadis. Films in stark, almost neorealist black and white, such as the subversive psychodrama The Fear (1966), were followed by colour productions such as Tango of Perversion, sometimes peppered with psychedelic interludes, or the early work of Nico Mastorakis, whose legendarily shocking and politically incorrect Island Of Death (1976) is another of the must-see items in our line-up. 
 
On the subject of politics, the boom in Greeksploitation ironically took place when Greece was under the dictatorship of The Colonels, a right-wing military junta that held the country in an iron grip from 1964 to 1976. The regime's prioritising of state television led to a drastic fall in film production, leaving a gap duly filled by opportunistic producers of exploitation, who exported their products to foreign markets where they were eagerly embraced on the grindhouse and sexploitation circuits. Additional explicit sequences were sometimes inserted into the softcore frivolities of the "Sex, Sun & Souvlaki" subgenre, resulting in the circulation of several different versions of the same film. When video began to eclipse the theatrical film sector in the early 1980s, many of the fleapits and 35mm film reels vanished without trace. 
 
Thanks to the dedicated work of boutique labels such as Mondo Macabro and Vinegar Syndrome, we are able to screen an extensive selection of these semi-forgotten productions in all their restored and often unabridged glory. In collaboration with Wet Kingdom Film Club and with screenings at Cinema Nova, Cinema RITCS and Cinema Aventure, our aim to show that Greek cinema is more than ever worth discovering, and to draw attention to a barely opened vault of cult viewing a world away from the popular clichés of Zorba the Greek or My Big Fat Greek Wedding.


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DOGTOOTH

17 March 2025 - 19h00 | Cinema RITCS

Three teenagers, raised in isolation, have been indoctrinated and infantilised by their parents' lies about the outside world, human biology, language itself. It was this tense, funny, absurdist arthouse horror-comedy that first ignited outside interest in the Greek Weird Wave, and put its director on the world map.
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PITY

17 March 2025 - 21h00 | Cinema RITCS

A lawyer whose wife is in a coma becomes addicted to wallowing in misery, so that when she wakes up unexpectedly he must create new reasons to be sad. Yannis Drakopoulos gives a masterclass in deadpan acting in this black comedy co-written by a regular Lanthimos collaborator, and featuring a lovely dog.
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THE FEAR

18 March 2025 - 19h15 | Cinéma Aventure

The creepy son of a wealthy farmer rapes and murders the family's deaf-mute servant girl. His parents cover up the crime, but his sister smells a rat. This stark rural drama, ahead of its time in its depiction of how its women's lives are blighted by male toxicity, builds to a tense climax at the sister's wedding.
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THE WILD PUSSYCAT

18 March 2025 - 21h30 | Cinéma Aventure

A stunning blonde devises an unusual revenge on the abusive boyfriend who drove her sister to suicide in a stylish softcore classic with a strong woman at its core, and a fluffy white cat bearing witness to her deliciously sadistic games in a room with a one-way mirror. Remade by Joe D'Amato as Emanuelle and Françoise.
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THE DESERTER

19 March 2025 - 19h00 | Cinéma Aventure

A handsome young deserter seeks refuge at a farm where he finds himself dividing his attentions between two sex-starved women: the farmer's wife and a lonely farmgirl. This arty sexploitation features a Morricone-esque score, sexy grape-eating and a muddy catfight. But all the while, military cops are closing in...
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THE MARK

19 March 2025 - 20h50 | Cinéma Aventure

Felons in hippy headbands double-cross each other over stolen gold in this gritty crime thriller with surprisingly well integrated hardcore interludes. Shot in sun-drenched Aegean locations (with a detour to Amsterdam for a knife fight) and featuring an abundance of naked blondes, one of whom goes mad with a razor. 
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TANGO OF PERVERSION

20 March 2025 - 19h00 | Cinéma Aventure

A macho sleazeball catches his girlfriend with a lesbian whom he kills, unaware the murder has been filmed through a one-way mirror by an impotent rich nerd with the worst haircut in film history. Greeksploitation at its most giallo-esque, featuring necrophilia, plot twists - and lots of groovy 1970s gear and dancing!
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DIAMONDS ON HER NAKED FLESH

20 March 2025 - 20h50 | Cinéma Aventure

Bella runs a low-rent hotel and her life is going nowhere fast until, one day, she discovers that a German guest has a secret stash of diamonds. She and her boyfriend duly hatch a plan to eliminate him, but all hell breaks loose when a gang of crooks comes looking for the loot. Greeksploitation at its grooviest! Screened in a special unedited cut, courtesey of Vinegar Syndrome, of the English version with French hardcore inserts!
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LUST FOR REVENGE (WEIRD GREECE NIGHT)

21 March 2025 - 22h00 | Cinema Nova

A bunch of jaded sophisticates, inspired by their pretentious writer friend, kidnap a little girl as part of a cruel game. The desperate parents pay the ransom, but the game goes horribly wrong and the father embarks on a righteous quest for vengeance in this violent thriller.
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RIVALS IN LOVE (WEIRD GREECE NIGHT)

21 March 2025 - 22h00 | Cinema Nova

A man suffering from amnesia is washed ashore on a Mykonos beach, and soon finds himself torn between two sexy, passionate women. Unfortunately, he is also wanted for a murder he can't remember. Plot twists and hardcore encounters galore in an archetypal example of the "Triple S" subgenre: Summer, Sex & Souvlaki!
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ISLAND OF DEATH

22 March 2025 - 21h30 | Cinema Nova

A nice English couple, honeymooning on Mykonos, turn out to be sex killers who sadistically murder nearly everyone they meet. But one of them gets their comeuppance in a brilliant ending! Carnage, rape and goat-shagging, in a beautifully filmed setting, earned this a place on the UK's Video Nasty list in the 1980s.
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ARCADIA

23 March 2025 - 17h00 | Cinema Nova

A couple drives to a remote coastal village to identify the corpse of an accident victim in this eerie but poignant ghost story about memory and loss, from the Greek Weird Wave. The phantoms, both physical and metaphysical, are bound by arcane laws of the afterlife, such as being unable to take off their shoes. 
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SUNTAN

26 March 2025 - 21h30 | Cinema Nova

On an Aegean holiday island, the resident doctor becomes infatuated with a flirty tourist half his age, and starts hanging out with her posse of party animals. At first, fully clothed on the nudist beach, he cuts a tragicomic figure, but soon he's neglecting his patients as his obsession leads him down a dark path.