Thessaloniki’s Agora Business Arm Turns to Future With New Initiatives

Because the Thessaloniki Movie Competition kicks off its 63rd version, this 12 months’s business part options the pilot version of a devoted tv strand and the launch of a Assume Tank sequence calling on European movie markets to chart a standard course for business confabs sooner or later.

Such initiatives are a part of newly appointed business head Angeliki Vergou’s mandate to steer the annual occasion by unsure occasions for the worldwide movie business even because the rising Greek enterprise continues to surge, thanks partly to a 40% money rebate that has lured worldwide productions akin to Ruben Östlund’s Palme d’Or winner “Triangle of Disappointment” and Rian Johnson’s Netflix blockbuster “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Thriller.”

With its Agora Collection part, Thessaloniki will hope to capitalize on a raft of recent high-end TV productions trying to put Greek drama on the map.

“There was such a progress lately of TV sequence taking pictures in our nation, attributable to in fact the tax rebate schemes,” says Vergou, pointing to examples just like the Apple TV Plus drama “Tehran.” “We determined that it’s time for us to step up and…begin supporting [Greek] content material creators of TV sequence and attempt to carry them a world viewers.”

The one-day occasion will carry collectively a variety of each Greek and worldwide TV producers, broadcasters and streaming providers. Among the many highlights can be a panel dialogue on international TV manufacturing that includes executives from Netflix Italy, Sky Studios and Germany’s Nadcon, in addition to a variety of occasions and masterclasses, together with a workshop led by “Huge Mouth” and “GLOW” author and producer Victor Quinaz.

One other spotlight is a Assume Tank sequence taking a look at points such because the function of streaming platforms within the manufacturing panorama, the influence of the pandemic on distribution and exhibition and the rising must introduce sustainable enterprise practices to each movie manufacturing and business occasions.

“We have to adapt to the brand new audiovisual challenges. We have to rethink and reshape many movie markets. We have to determine what’s our future and tips on how to proceed to assist the audiovisual sector,” Vergou says.

The Agora will proceed to assist rising expertise by initiatives just like the Agora Quick Movie Lab, which gives session and assist to quick movie administrators growing their first options, and Meet the Future, which was launched in 2019 to showcase up-and-coming Greek expertise. After spotlighting rising administrators and cinematographers in previous editions, this 12 months’s occasion will concentrate on Greek actors who’re prepared for break-out roles.

The Crossroads Co-Manufacturing Discussion board, in the meantime, presents 14 initiatives in improvement from Southeastern and Central Europe, the Mediterranean and the broader Black Sea area, to an viewers of business company. Eight Works in Progress can even be showcased. Earlier individuals embrace Tereza Nvotová’s Locarno Golden Leopard winner “Nightsiren” (pictured), Christos Nikou’s “Apples,” which opened the Horizons strand of the 2020 Venice Movie Competition, and Azra Deniz Okyay’s Venice Critics’ Week prize winner “Ghosts.”

After becoming a member of the pageant crew in 2001, Vergou was appointed coordinator of Crossroads in 2008 and named its head in 2019. She describes it as a “nice honor” to take the reins from long-time Agora head Yianna Sarri, including that getting into her new function seems like “the pure continuation of issues.”

“With Yianna, we’ve been constructing the Agora collectively for all these years,” she says, noting how the occasion’s success may be measured by the variety of company returning to Thessaloniki this 12 months. “For me, it implies that they belief our program. They belief the collection of the pageant and Agora. It’s a spot that they wish to return to, to find new abilities and new initiatives.”

The Thessaloniki Worldwide Movie Competition runs Nov. 3 – 13.