Thessaloniki

Abstract

Ana Grgić and Antonis Lagarias report from the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival, which celebrated its 24th year with a return to in-person programming following the pandemic. Reflecting a programmatic interest in cinematic themes relating to the future of a humanity facing ecological and techno-existential threats, the festival’s focus was “postreality,” a popular term for indicating the sensory world’s mediation through images and virtual universes. Outside of this special focus on documentaries that challenge conceptions of the “real” world, films employed a range of archival materials to explore issues of individual and collective memory. The festival’s retrospective focused on the Latvian director Laila Pakalniņa, whose central preoccupation is observing and documenting a subjective view of reality.