International Independent Film Festival of Athens - KINO Athens
Home to conceptually provocative features and shorts
Jury & Awards
International Feature Film Competition Jury
Feature Film Grand Prize City of Athens: Distribution Award
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SOFIA EXARCHOU
was born in Athens. She studied electrical engineering at NTUA, film direction at Stavrakos Film School& ESAV(Toulouse) and Theater at the Stella Adler Studio of Acting in NY. She has worked as director and screenwriter since 2009. Park, her first feature film, premiered at Toronto IFF and San Sebastian IFF, where it won the New Directors Award. Her sophomore film, Animal, was selected in L’Atelier (Festival de Cannes) and premiered at Locarno, where it won the Best Performance Award. Animal also won Best Film Award at Thessaloniki IFF, Cork IFF and Vancouver IFF, Seven Prizes at the Hellenic Film Academy’s Iris Awards (Best Film, Director, Screenplay, Actress, Supporting Actress, Editing, Sound) plus numerous other festival awards. Animal was also nominated for the 2025 LUX European Audience Film Award organised by the European Parliament and the European Film Academy, in partnership with the European Commission and the Europa Cinemas network.
YANNA SARRI
graduated in 2000 with a BA and MA in Communication Studies and Film Studies from Coventry University and City University in the UK. In 2000 she started working for the production company KINO. Since 2003, she began working as a programer at Thessaloniki Int. Film Festival and Thessaloniki Documentary Festival. In 2010, she was appointed Head of Agora for both festivals. Yianna was also Head of Program at the Greek Film Festival in Berlin, since 2016. In March 2022, she started collaborating with Drama International Short Film Festival and she created the Short Film Hub. Yianna is a programmer and film festival expert. In September 2023 she was appointed director of promotion Hellas Film at the Hellenic Film & Audiovisual Center – Creative Greece.
CHRISTOS A. DERMEΝTZOPOULOS
is a Professor at the Department of Communication, Media and Culture of Panteion University of Athens and Director of the Culture and Cultural Management Laboratory. He studied Sociology in Athens and Anthropology, History and Film Studies in Paris. He is the editor of the series Alterities and Film Studies (Metaichmio Editions). He also directs the History and Film Studies series for Mauve Editions. Since 1996, he has served on the editorial board of the Theory and Culture Journal Utopia. He has worked as a Tutor and as an Academic Coordinator in postgraduate programs of the Hellenic Open University (Cultural Management and Public History) and the Open University of Cyprus (Cultural Policy and Development). He also directs the Biennale of Western Balkans (BoWB), an arts and culture organization (BoWB). He has been involved in European research projects for many years as a collaborator, coordinator, or examiner. His research interests include visual and popular culture, popular literature, cultural policy, and management, as well as popular cinema and its genres.
International Short Film Competition Jury
Short Film Grand Prize City of Athens:
235 Post-Production Award (Sponsor 2|35)
LILIANA ASLANIDOU
was born in Thessaloniki, Greece, studied History of Art and Architecture at Princeton University, USA, and trained in design for film and TV in New York and London. She lives in Athens and works as a designer in film and advertising. She has recently worked as set decorator in the pan-European TV series KABUL (Blonde Productions, 2024), as art director in Cédric Klapisch's TV series SALAD GRECQUE for Amazon Studios (Blonde Productions, 2022) and as production designer in ZDF’s ENDLICH WITWER (Avaton Films, 2023) and Olias Verroiopoulou short film LA PREMIERE IMAGE (Haos Film, 2023). She has worked in National Opera House commissioned BLEAT (2021) by Yorgos Lanthimos, BROADWAY by Christos Massalas (Neda Film, 2020 / Iris Award for Best Production Design 2023) and Walt Disney's production RISE (Faliro House, 2021).
DAPHNE HERETAKIS
studied at Paris 8 University, where she graduated with a Master’s degree in documentary filmmaking, and at Le Fresnoy, national studio for contemporary art. Her films tread a fine line between documentary and fiction, blending intimacy and the collective, and has been presented in many festivals such as La Semaine de la Critique à Cannes, IFFR, Visions du réel, Sarajevo Film Festival, Dokleipzig, etc…
With her first feature film project - currently in pre-production - she has participated at the Sundance Mediterranean Screenwriter's Workshop, LIM Less Is More workshop by Groupe Ouest, Crossroads Co-Production Forum and the Emergence Program in Paris. She lives and works between France and Greece.
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MARIANGELA CICCARELLO
is an Italian filmmaker and visual artist, now based in Athens, where she is an Assistant Professor in Cinema Studies at the American College of Greece. In her films, performances, and texts, geographical, geological, and historical landscapes interact with the feminine body.
Her work has been featured at Locarno, Edinburgh, Torino, Harvard Art Museum, and Film Society of Lincoln Center, among others. She has participated in residencies and workshops across Europe and the U.S. and received support from the Roberto Cimetta Fund, Valletta 2018 Foundation, and NY State Council for the Arts. She has been a featured artist at Mediterranea 18 Biennale and Syros International Film Festival.
Mariangela holds an MFA from Rutgers University, an MA from the University of Provence, and a BA in Philosophy from Bologna. In 2019-20, she was a participant in the Whitney Independent Study Program. She also creates work as part of Nusquam Productions, dedicated to critical interrogations of Mediterranean geographies, histories and identities.
National Competition Jury
>> Feature Film Grand Prize City of Athens: Distribution Award | 500 Euro cash Prize (Sponsor: EKKOMED)
>>Short Film Grand Prize City of Athens: Distribution Award
PANOS GKENAS
is head of Greek Short Stories - In Competition section of the Athens International Film Festival (AIFF) since 2014, editor-in-chief and social media manager of CINEMA cinemagazine.gr. He collaborated with the Greek Film Archive at the 8th Athens Avant-Garde Film Festival, with the Goethe-Institut on First Films First, and participated in the presentation of the educational program First Hour Cinema. In 2015, he curated the accompanying videos for the lectures "Common Places," a collaboration between AIFF and the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center. Since 2023, he has taken on the role of Greek correspondent for the BAFTA Awards of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts and has curated the screenings of Greek short films at the museums of the Piraeus Cultural Foundation. His articles have been published in Cinema, Sonik, Esquire, the newspaper Kathimerini and on avopolis.gr. Member of the Hellenic Film Academy and the International Film Music Critics Association (IFMCA).
AFRODITI KAIRAKI
is a film studies instructor and filmmaker. Her academic interests include postmodern cinema, the interdisciplinary relationship between film and literature, social representations in cinema, and the history of short films. She has participated in numerous conferences and collective publications with titles such as Representations of Gender-Based Violence in Greek Popular Cinema, Trigger Warnings on LGBTQ+ Violence in Media, Short Film in Greece and Cinematic Avant-Garde, The Television Adaptation of the Novel Astrofengia, and Refugee Neighborhoods as a Counterpoint to the “Idealized” City of the Domestic Film Industry, among others. Her postdoctoral research (Department of Communication, Media, and Culture, Panteion University) focuses on content and trigger warning practices in cinema. In 2021, she published her first essay, Postmodernism and New Hollywood (Aigokeros Publications), and she has an upcoming study on the history of short films in Greece. She has directed two short films and worked in film productions as an assistant director and production assistant. Currently, she is a Postdoctoral Instructor at Panteion University, a producer at the Canadian production company Rare Earth Media, and screenwriter for a forthcoming documentary about the political economy of public space and the right to the city.
CHRISTOS ANDRIANOPOULOS
was born in 1996 in Athens. In 2014 he moved to New York where he studied film at SUNY Purchase. In June 2020 he graduated and returned to Greece where he lives. His latest film "In the Sky of Nothing with Very Little" premiered in the international first-time international competition program of the 25th Thessaloniki Documentary Festival, where it was awarded three prizes and the KINOATHENS grand prize for the national competition section.
