The shortfilm “Downhill” by Stelios Kammitsis will be screened just before (see below for more information).
An aged, prosperous and above any suspicion, bourgeois by the nickname ‘The Master’, lives isolated in a luxurious beachfront villa with his teenage daughter who he has kept well protected from the mischief of the outside world. Behind the façade of the vigorous art lover, however, he prospers by illegally trading antiquities in the black market and a loan sharking. The ‘Master’ has two henchmen to do his ‘dirty work’, Hermes and John. Both will commit a fatal mistake: while Hermes falls for the daughter of his ‘Master’, John is obsessed with a prostitute. Both will pay a heavy price for being ‘sentimentalists’.
Nicholas Triandafyllidis
Born in 1966 in Chicago, Illinois, Nicholas Triandafyllidis spent his childhood in the US. After high school, he studied sociology in Athens, Greece. Shortly after that, he went to London to study the art of film making at the London International Film School.
In 1993, his first short film “Dogs Licking My Heart”, a b&w neo noir starring Blaine L. Reininger from the music group Tuxedomoon, won the first price at the Greek Short Film Festival. After a stream of visually stunning films such as “Radio Moscow” (1995), “The Overcoat” (1996) and “Black Milk” (1999).
Triandafyllidis directed the legendary documentary “I Put A Spell On Me”(2001) about Screamin Jay Hawkins with the help of Jim Jarmusch. He has worked, amongst others, as a radio producer, journalist, book keeper, DJ, music promoter and venue owner.
Over the years, Nicholas Triandafyllidis has gained the reputation of one of the foremost auteurs in the Greek filmmaking industry, and one of the pioneers of the Greek New Wave. After several years in self exile, “The Sentimentalists” marks his long awaited return to film.
Downhill – by Stelios Kammitsis
Cyprus, 2015, 13′, Greek with German subtitles
On a sunny day in September, she marches down the hill of a Mediterranean island. He is driving down the road with his old car and picks her up. As they drive downhill, the missing pieces of the story unravel, and the news that so much upset her is revealed. One thing is for sure, whatever happened earlier, no one should find out. The story of a mother trying to come to terms with the admission of her son’s sexuality in an island community that is taking the first step toward the recognition of same-sex relationships.
Stelios Kammitsis
(BA in Film at SUNY Purchase in New York) worked as an assistant to Palme d’Or winner Theo Angelopoulos and later to Dimitris Papaioanou, director of the Athens 2004 Olympics opening ceremony. He also worked as a screenwriter for various Greek TV series. In 2010 he started shooting his first feature film JERKS (ΚΩΛΟΠΑΙ∆Α) in Athens. The film opened on March of 2012 in Greece and has participate in International Film Festivals around the world, winning Best feature and Best Actor in Chicago Greek Film Festival and Audience Awards in Cyprus International Film Festival. In 2014 he got scholarships from the Nipkow program in Berlin and the MFI Script 2 Film in Greece for the screenplay of his next film, THE MAN WITH THE ANSWERS.
