The festival announced the awards at a ceremony held at Warehouse C, presented by Vassilis Terzopoulos, a member of the Greek Programme team.
“At a time when everything seems threatening and dangerous, we anxiously search for a ray of light and optimism. One such ray is the knowledge that cinema and art can offer us ways forward and bring us closer together,” Terzopoulos said.
The festival presented awards across its international competition sections, podcast and immersive categories, alongside audience and special awards.
Arrivals International Competition
Read more: Jacqueline Lentzou Wins Golden Alexander at Thessaloniki Film Festival
A Day in the Life of Jo: Chapter Phaedra, directed by Jacqueline Lentzou, won the Golden Alexander – Theo Angelopoulos Award for Best Feature Film, which carries a €10,000 prize.
The jury praised the film’s tender portrayal of adolescence, its emotional upheavals and its longing to be seen and loved. It also highlighted Lentzou’s ability to weave everyday life with the transcendent, creating a cinematic language that explores bonds that endure beyond death.
Pauline Jullier and Nicolas Chapoulier won the Silver Alexander for Best Director, accompanied by €5,000, for Les Indes. The jury recognised the film’s visual style and landscapes, which transform a journey into the past into an immersive experience while exploring the violence of power and inequalities in contemporary society.
The Best Actor Award went jointly to Kaike Kopke and Ítalo Martins for their performances in By the River, directed by Mateus Farias and Enock Carvalho.
Arisa Sasaki won the Best Actress Award for Titanic Ocean, directed by Konstantina Kotzamani. The jury praised her restrained yet powerful performance as a young woman searching for her voice.
Kotzamani’s Titanic Ocean also received the Artistic Achievement Award, with the jury highlighting its production design, costumes, cinematography, sound design and music.
The section awarded a Special Mention to Evita Andriopoulou for her performance in A Day in the Life of Jo: Chapter Phaedra.
Meet the Neighbors+
The Meet the Neighbors+ competition showcases first or second films by directors from 36 countries across southeastern Europe, the Mediterranean and the Middle East.
Blerta Basholli’s Dua won the Golden Alexander – Michel Demopoulos Award for Best Feature Film, accompanied by €10,000.
Set in Pristina in the late 1990s, the film follows a 13-year-old girl searching for her place in a rapidly changing world as she experiences adolescence and the growing threat of war in Kosovo. The jury praised Basholli’s sensitive and humane approach to a defining moment in the region’s history.
Abdallah Al-Khatib won the Silver Alexander for Best Director, worth €5,000, for Chronicle of a Siege. Inspired by real stories of Palestinians, the film examines everyday life amid destruction, fear and repeated bombardments. The jury praised its raw, deeply human approach and its ability to find room for humour and the absurd amid tragedy.
The Best Actor Award went jointly to Alexis Manenti and Julian Swiezewski for Flesh and Gasoline, directed by Pierre Le Gall.
Maria Petrova won the Best Actress Award for Hold Me, directed by Myrsini Aristidou. The jury highlighted her debut performance as 11-year-old Iris, a girl determined not to let her estranged father disappear from her life again.
Flesh and Gasoline also won the Thessaloniki Municipality Award for Best Screenplay, carrying a €5,000 prize. The jury praised its transformation of a tough workplace drama into an unexpected love story between two truck drivers.
Film Forward
The >>Film Forward competition presents work by emerging, daring filmmakers whose first or second features challenge conventional ways of representing reality and cinematic genres.
I Plant My Hand in the Garden, directed by Boris Hadžija and Hoda Taheri, won the Golden Alexander for Best Feature Film, accompanied by €10,000.
The jury praised the film’s humour and emotional strength, as well as its exploration of social conventions and the diversity of human experience. Drawing on the directors’ own difficulties obtaining residence permits in Germany, the film reflects on European society through the experiences of its Serbian and Iranian creators.
Rob Rice won the Silver Alexander for Best Director, worth €5,000, for Ponderosa. The jury recognised his distinctive visual style, unusual atmosphere and unconventional sequence of scenes.
Alexis Kalofolias won the Best Actor Award for The Judas Tree, directed by Christos Chouliaras.
Alexis Bledel received the Best Actress Award for Ponderosa. Rice accepted the award on her behalf, praising her understated performance and saying he was pleased that the jury had recognised it.
Argyris Germanidis’ Dust Particles won the Artistic Achievement Award for its inventive use of visual techniques and cinematic languages to explore a world suspended between different places and times.
Podcast Competition
The festival’s Podcast Competition featured eight Greek-language and two English-language productions. The winner received a €2,000 prize.
The Best Podcast Award went to Tetris – Growing Up, by Thomas Sideris. The jury praised its direct and often raw account of the abuse of a boy growing up in Greece during the 1980s, as well as its sensitive treatment of neurodiversity and its creative use of music from the video game Tetris.
The jury awarded a Special Mention to Radio Utopia, Radio Ark: Self-Management on Thessaloniki’s Airwaves, by Zinovia Sapouna, for documenting an ambitious initiative in independent broadcasting and examining both the strengths and challenges of collective organisation.
Immersive: All Around Cinema
The Immersive: All Around Cinema competition recognises works that use emerging technologies to explore different forms of extended reality.
Gilles Jobin’s Sunset Motel won the Golden Alexander, accompanied by €2,000. The jury praised its use of space and its ability to create an immersive, mysterious world that challenges the boundaries between the familiar and the unfamiliar.
The section awarded a Special Mention to Mathieu van Eeckhout’s Yesterday Maybe, which explores grief and loss through a series of imaginative, immersive worlds.
Mermaid Award
The Mermaid Award, which carries a €3,000 prize, recognises the best LGBTQIA+-themed film in the festival’s official programme.
Elephants in the Fog, directed by Abinash Bikram Shah, won the award. The jury praised its visual imagination, immersive atmosphere and exploration of spirituality, community life and identity.
The jury also gave Special Mentions to Pierre Le Gall’s Flesh and Gasoline for its sensitive portrayal of an unexpected love story, and Bertil Nilsson’s Masc for its original approach to a compelling personality.
Other awards
The Alpha Bank Accessibility Award, worth €3,000, went to Stand Up, directed by Mari Sanders. The award recognises a film or individual that highlights accessibility in the arts.
Fischer Audience Awards
Fischer presented five audience awards to the films that received the most votes from festivalgoers:
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Arrivals International Competition: The Newcomer, directed by Louis Paxton.
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Meet the Neighbors+: Re-Crucified, directed by Thodoris Papadoulakis.
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Film Forward: The Judas Tree, directed by Christos Chouliaras.
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Official Programme: Learning to Breathe Underwater, directed by Rebecca Fortune.
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Michalis Cacoyannis Award for Greek Cinema: Apart, directed by Steliana Kliris.
FIPRESCI Awards
The International Federation of Film Critics (FIPRESCI) presented two awards.
The award for the best film in the Arrivals International Competition went to By the River, directed by Mateus Farias and Enock Carvalho. The jury praised its portrayal of Recife’s mangroves as a place of desire and resistance, while examining how religious and political power enter people’s private lives.
The FIPRESCI award for the best Greek film premiering at the festival went to The Judas Tree, directed by Christos Chouliaras.
(Source: AMNA)