
Directing
Konstantinos Giannaris (Sydney, 1959) is a Greek film director. Born in Sydney. He studied economics, history and philosophy at Keele and Birmingham Universities in Britain. His film career began in England, where he completed short, low-budget independent films. He was involved in the 1982 experimental English documentary The Revenge of the Teenage Perverts in which gay teenagers ask English heterosexuals about their views on homosexuality. His first Greek film, A Place in the Sun in 1995, won the Best Greek Film Award at the Drama Short Film Festival. It was followed in the same year by the film Close to Paradise and in 1998 by the film From the Edge of the City, which won the second prize for Best Film of the Ministry of Culture. In 2001 he filmed Dekapentaugustos and in 2004 Homer. His films have been screened at many international film festivals and forums. His first feature film Near Paradise was financed and shot in London. Today he works and lives in Athens. He has openly declared that he is homosexual and an atheist.

A contemporary married couple and their eight-year-old son are exposed to our observation. The husband, around 35, works as a tax specialist for an import-export firm. His 30-year-old wife looks after their child and their home. The man's impending promotion at work triggers their dreams of social advancement and financial improvement. As their plain everyday life unfolds the characters are denuded to reveal their different needs and desires which render their functioning and communication increasingly hard. The man's inability to meet the escalating demands of his social circle and those of his wife brings tension into their relationship and leads to the culmination of the drama. The unexpected as well as extreme solution given by the heroine leads both the hero and the viewer to redefine reality on the basis of how things look and how they really are.

Gay and lesbian teenagers interview straight people on the streets of London about their views on homosexuality.

Middle August in Athens. Three families, living in a three storey building, leave for their summer vacations. Everyone is wishing for a miracle to happen this summer. In the meantime, a drifter breaks into their apartments and rummages their personal belongings, thus unfolding hidden secrets.

Twenty-five films from twenty-five European countries by twenty-five European directors.

A bereaved woman adopts multiple disguises to track down the last three people to see her boyfriend before he died.

A bereaved woman adopts multiple disguises to track down the last three people to see her boyfriend before he died.

Inspired by the real-life story of a bus hijacking in Northern Greece, HOSTAGE explores the sensitive issue of Greek-Albanian relations through a young Albanian who takes over an intercity bus. Upon hijacking the bus, he takes the seven passengers hostage and demands a ransom of half and million euro, and safe passage to his homeland of Albania. Surrounded by police, the bus trundles towards the Albanian border and the tension mounts until the final harrowing conclusion.

Inspired by the real-life story of a bus hijacking in Northern Greece, HOSTAGE explores the sensitive issue of Greek-Albanian relations through a young Albanian who takes over an intercity bus. Upon hijacking the bus, he takes the seven passengers hostage and demands a ransom of half and million euro, and safe passage to his homeland of Albania. Surrounded by police, the bus trundles towards the Albanian border and the tension mounts until the final harrowing conclusion.

Minority-group Greeks from an outer suburb of Athens struggle with their life on society's fringe and exploitation of one another.

Twenty-five films from twenty-five European countries by twenty-five European directors.

A gay poet heads west from New York City in his convertible. He picks up a muscular sailor who's bisexual; then Jackie, a waitress at a diner, joins them. Jackie is attracted to the poet who rebuffs her romantic gestures; rejection fuels her continued interest in him. The sailor and the poet are bonded by sex, but the sailor's frank advances to Jackie make him uninteresting to her. The sailor can get violent, the poet is passive, Jackie is glamorous and detached. The landscape changes, they stop in cities and in the desert. They reach a lake. Who will be left out of a final pairing?

Ilias, a young man of Athens, meets Panagiotis, a new-comer from Albania and falls in love with him. He pays dearly for the relationship.
