Focus on Angelos Frantzis

Angelos Frantzis is a film director and screenwriter. He was born in Athens and studied Film at INSAS in Brussels. His films (Polaroid, A Dog’s Dream, In the Woods, Symptom, Still River, Eftyhia, Murphy’s Law) have received awards and screened at numerous international festivals. He has also worked for several years as a film critic, and has created mixed-media works presented at the Venice Architecture Biennale, the Athens Festival, and the Onassis Stegi.

Angelos Frantzis was first introduced to the Greek audience at the Drama Festival in 1992 with his short film Short Stories for People and Oranges. This was followed by Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf? (1993) and Nineteen (1995).

In 1997, together with Stratis Vougioukas, we shot A Hole in the World, a short black-and-white film on Super 8. At the same time, we wrote a manifesto, which we brought with us to Drama. Instead of an introductory note, I present it here in its original form, straight from that distant time.

Angelos Frantzis

A HOLE IN THE WORLD MANIFESTO
(and not only)

We want a cinema defined by our wanderings, our encounters, our loves. Films written in parks, on streets, and in public squares.

We want a cinema that does not teach us, but rather teaches us to see reality anew.

We want to do what brings us joy.

We want a cinematic cinema — that is, theatrical, literary, musical, painterly, poetic, realistic, political, fantastical, alive.

We want a cinema whose ethics shape its style, and whose style reflects its ethics.

We want to make films the way we walk, the way we breathe, the way we think, the way we speak, the way we dream.

We want to accustom audiences to the unfamiliar.

We want to make a cinema that depends as little as possible on money.

We want to make a cinema that is playful — and therefore serious.

We want to say that cinema was never a window onto the world. Cinema is a hole in the world, and A Hole in the World is the manifesto of our cinema.

The following films will be screened

Wild Beast
18’, 2014
Fiction, DCP

The wild beast still roars in the sewer. People are frightened, trying not to hear it. But the animal’s voice echoes. It rises from the basements. It seeps into empty kitchens. It spreads into teenage bedrooms and slips into darkened living rooms. It stands still, looking outside, ready to leave the apartment building. Nothing feels final. Everything is possible. A silent protest of apartments.

A continuation of the Got to be real project, first presented at the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2012.

Production: Oi Kipoi
Written and directed by: Angelos Frantzis
Cast: Katia Goulioni, Michelle Valley, Alexandros Voulgaris

Α Hole in the World
17’, 1997
Fiction, 16mm

The extraordinary adventures of an exceptionally ordinary young man in a city where nothing ever happens—until he opens the wrong door and irreversibly punctures his world. A report on a hypothetical world, and at the same time, its user manual. A serious comedy shot in black-and-white Super 8, created entirely in collaboration with Stratis Vougioukas.

Production, screenplay, direction & editing: Angelos Frantzis, Stratis Vougioukas
Cast: Stratis Vougioukas, Depy Paga, Petros Christidis, Angelos Frantzis

Nineteen
15’, 1995
Fiction, 16mm

A collage-letter to friends I lost, or who drifted away. A film about the end of adolescence in the 1990s, set between Athens and Brussels. Fragments and snippets of memory, stitched together in the way memory actually works: through the flow of emotions. Letters inspired by those my friends sent me in Brussels, Super 8 footage I shot myself, photographs, Video 8 material, and newly filmed standalone scenes. The final medium is 16mm film.

Production, direction, screenplay, editing: Angelos Frantzis
Cast: Panos, Depy, Yiannis, Alexandros, Kogia, and Michalis

Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?
18’, 1993
Fiction, 16mm

Two soldiers, caught in an unknown war, find refuge in a ruined cinema and are forced to confront their personal ghosts. A graduation film created as part of the INSAS film school programme, based on Lorenzo Mattotti’s comic Oltre le linee, and shot in Belgium, the Netherlands, and France.

Cast: Denis Vandelbrouk, Michel Mentens, Gusepina Mamone, Akarova

Visions
8’, 1992
Fiction 16mm

An exercise in style filmed as part of the film school, inspired by the cinema of David Lynch, and specifically by Eraserhead and Blue Velvet.

Short Stories about People and Oranges
17’, 1992
Fiction, 16mm

What do oranges think as they roll down the hills of Athens—and how do they affect the lives of its residents? My first official film, shot in the summer of 1990 after two years of film school, with friends who came from Brussels to help.

Production: Angelos Frantzis and Atelier de Réalisation
Screenplay, Direction, Editing: Angelos Frantzis
Cast: Yiorgos Kimoulis, Depy Paga, Johnnie Theodoridis

Friday 12/9/2025

Alexandros Open-Air Cinema

20:30

Screening FOCUS ON ANGELOS FRANTZIS

FOCUS ON ANGELOS FRANTZIS

Wild Beast 18΄
A Hole in the World 17΄
Nineteen 15΄
Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf ? 18΄
Visions 8΄
Short Stories About People and Orang 17΄

PURCHASE TICKET