.png)
3 weeks ago
3
One week after Greece’s Oscar selection process descended into chaos, with all but two of the 23 eligible films withdrawing from consideration for the international feature film race at the 97th Academy Awards, industry reps met with government officials this week to hash out their grievances and plot a way forward amid growing frustrations with the state of the beleaguered Greek film biz.
Producer Maria Drandaki, who was part of a delegation from the Audiovisual Producers’ Association of Greece (SAPOE) that met with culture ministry reps on Tuesday, said the Oscars fiasco is just “the tip of the iceberg.”
“I think the problem now is getting bigger than the Oscars,” she said. “This whole mishandling of the situation is getting combined with the tension that was here in the audiovisual sector for months now.” She added: “There’s a lot of tension that we’ve been trying to handle…and we were never heard [by the government].”
Earlier this month, the Greek culture ministry selected four industry professionals to choose the country’s submission for the international Oscar race. They included film critic Leda Galanou, actress Kora Karvounis, screenwriter Kallia Papadakis and director Vassilis Kekatos, who won the Cannes short film Palme d’Or in 2019 for “The Distance Between Us and the Sky,” with Kekatos tapped to head the committee.
Two days later, the committee members received an email informing them they’d been abruptly canned, with a government official saying they had been notified of their selection “by mistake” and that their participation had not been “finalized.” A replacement committee was quickly announced, with Greek industry reps crying foul over the ministry’s “unacceptable and distressing” handling of the situation.
That kicked off a frantic week of recriminations and accusations, as old grievances resurfaced and more than two dozen filmmakers withdrew their films from the Oscar race, penning a blistering open letter to the Ministry of Culture casting “serious doubts on the credibility and validity of the procedure.”
Meanwhile, several members of the replacement committee subsequently stepped down, including Asimina Proedrou, director of last year’s Greek Oscar submission “Behind the Haystacks,” who while announcing her resignation on Facebook said she “refuse[d] to legitimize” the government’s bungling of the selection process.
The plot thickened throughout the week, with Deputy Minister of Culture Iasonas Fotilas attempting to pass the buck at a press conference last Thursday onto an unnamed subordinate who he claimed had acted “unlawfully” during the selection procedure.
In a scathing letter shared with Variety, a union of culture ministry employees shot back, accusing Fotilas of “looking for scapegoats” and insisting that he and government colleagues “assume their responsibility without passing it on to employees who have performed their duties with integrity and diligence, conscientiously and with sensitivity to meritocracy and transparency.
“We will not tolerate any prefabricated disciplinary procedure to deflect responsibility from the political leadership,” the letter stated. “We stand by our colleagues in the relevant directorate and the employee who is being unfairly targeted, so that responsibility is not attributed where it really belongs.”
For Drandaki, the producer behind Sofia Exarchou’s 2023 Locarno prizewinner “Animal,” which was considered one of the frontrunners for the Greek Oscar bid, the scandal has simply highlighted ongoing grievances between the industry and the government, which earlier this year announced the creation of a new body, Creative Greece, that will oversee all audiovisual production in the Mediterranean nation. The organization unites the Greek Film Center, formerly responsible for domestic production, and the National Center of Audiovisual Media and Communication (EKOME), the body that manages the country’s 40% cash rebate scheme.
“The Oscars is a very small thing compared to what is happening in Greece in general,” she said, citing frustration with Creative Greece, which is yet to announce its board of directors, as well as ongoing funding shortfalls at the Greek Film Center.
Moreover, she echoed the position of other Greek filmmakers that deputy minister Fotilas — who assumed his post in June and is meeting with industry reps for the first time — is ill-equipped to manage the situation as local filmmakers demand “a bigger discussion than the Oscars.” “The deputy minister doesn’t know how to handle this,” she said.
Reached by Variety, Fotilas doubled down on his claims of “illegal behavior” on the part of a civil servant at the culture ministry, insisting: “I have no problem with the academy or the producers. My problem was with the procedure.”
He said he floated a proposal for industry reps to form a new selection committee, insisting he would willingly accept their recommendations, while also asserting that he would change the law — “today, if it’s possible” — to hand over the Oscar selection process to the Hellenic Film Academy, a move long championed by the film body and its nearly 700 members.
“I hope that my commitments will be enough to make them reconsider,” Fotilas said. “Otherwise, I am afraid that we will kill Greek cinema.”
With just over two weeks to go until the Sept. 13 deadline announced by the deputy minister to name Greece’s Oscar selection, Drandaki said the industry “needs more” from the government before filmmakers would even begin to consider resubmitting their films, with even that possibility remote. “I find it difficult to return if we are not really, really heard,” she said. “I don’t know how this can happen in two weeks.”
Last week, the Hellenic Film Academy penned an open letter asking for this year’s selection process to be scrapped and for Greece not to submit a film for the international feature film race at next year’s Academy Awards, which will take place on March 3.
“It’s very radical. We know it’s not good for the country, and the reputation of the country,” said academy president Lefteris Charitos. Given the events of the past week, however, he added it would be “very difficult” for the damage to be undone ahead of the Academy’s Oct. 2 submission deadline. “There’s solidarity at the moment, and most of us are united and trying to move things forward.”
As Greek filmmakers circle the wagons, Yorgos Zois, who won best directing honors at the Sarajevo Film Festival for his existential sci-fi drama “Arcadia,” delivered an impassioned speech at that event’s closing ceremony on Friday, connecting the Greek Oscar fiasco to recent tragedies — including the deadly train crash last year that claimed 57 lives — in which government officials have dodged accountability while pinning the blame on low-level employees.
“I can sometimes understand their ignorance, but their arrogance towards the working people is unacceptable,” Zois said. “The government should be the servants of the people and not the rulers. As long as they are violent, disrespectful and arrogant to us, we will continue to resist, united on all fronts.”
English (US) ·