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This year’s “Hellas Filmbox Berlin” (18–22 January 2017), a Greek film festival established in 2015 to highlight the current Greek film scene and present it to a German audience, features five films in the special history section on Greek Jews in the Holocaust and Greece under German occupation:

Saturday, 21.01.2017, 9.45 pm, Hall 1
Ouzeri Tsitsanis (Director present)

Greece 2015, D: Manousos Manousakis, starring Andreas Konstantinou, Christina Hilla Fameli, Haris Fragoulis, Vasiliki Troufakou

Cloudy Sunday unfolds the forbidden love story between a Jewish girl and a Christian boy during the German occupation in Thessaloniki in 1942. The racist laws have been implemented and the only place to escape the hatred and inhumanity is a small club, where Vasilis Tsitsanis fills the hearts and minds of people with his beautiful rebetika folk music. Despite the resistance, the persistent hunt for the Jews gradually spreads and suddenly simple choices become life-changing decisions. Based on the book Ouzeri Tsitsanis by George Skarbadonis.

Trailer

Saturday, 21.01.2017, 5.15 pm, Hall 3
Portait of my father in times of war (Director present)

Germany, Greece 2016, D: Timon Koulmasis

With the German occupation in Greece (1941–1944) as a background, this film tells the love story between the director’s father, an assistant professor at the mysterious German Scientific Institute of Athens – financed by the occupying power, Germany, but which in reality was a refuge for resistant students – and Nelly, a young student in Fine Arts. The film also traces the portrait of their friend Rudolf Fahrner, founder of the Institute, comrade of the Stauffenberg Brothers, and one of the few conspirators of the assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler, on 20 July 1944, that survived the repression that followed.

Saturday, 21.01.2017, 7.30 pm, Hall 2
Light Thickens (Director present)

Documentary, Greece, Germany 2015, D: Lydia Konsta

This film approaches the wounds left behind by the German occupation of Greece, with a new set of eyes. Lydia Konsta interviews a German Wehrmacht radio operator, who was situated in Greece and kept a journal. Greek and German artists are simultaneously inspired to create through their meetings with the survivors of those events in Greece. Their testimonials are overwhelming. Still today we fight to manage the trauma of freak, loss and guilt of that time.
Can art contribute to face the trauma? This film leaves the answer to the viewer.

Trailer

Sunday, 22.01.2017. 4 pm, Hall 2
Trezoros: The Lost Jews of Kastoria (Producer present)

Documentary, Greece 2016, D: Lawrence Russo und Larry Confino

This moving documentary illuminates the lives of a Greek Sephardic community whose story speaks for people who have been decimated by war and discrimination. The story is set in the beautiful, idyllic city of Kastoria where Jews and Christians lived in harmony for over 10 centuries. In October of 1940 all would change after the invasion of Greece by Axis forces. Initially occupied by Italy, the Jewish community remained safe – but after Mussolini fell from power the Nazis took control of the town, dooming the community that had existed since the times of the Roman Empire.
The film uses never before seen archival footage, vibrantly bringing to life just one of the many Jewish communities that had existed in Greece before the end of World War II. Trezoros (Ladino/Judeo-Spanish term of endearment meaning “Treasures”) is a highly emotional story told by its survivors, with interviews filmed on location in Kastoria, Thessaloniki, Athens, Tzur Moshe, Tel Aviv, Miami, Los Angeles, and New York.

Trailer

Further Informationen on program and tickets: http://www.hellasfilmbox.de/en/festival-2017/programme-2017/