Thessaloniki Film Festival Honours Composer Stavros Xarchakos

Composer Stavros Xarchakos will receive an honorary Golden Alexander at the 67th Thessaloniki Film Festival in November for his lifetime contribution to Greek culture, organisers said while unveiling the lineup.

The tribute takes place on Saturday 7 November at 5.15pm at the Olympion cinema, the Thessaloniki Film Festival said. Following the ceremony, a special screening of Costas Ferris’s 1983 film Rembetiko begins.

For that film, Xarchakos wrote new songs in the spirit of old rebetiko. Based on the life of singer Marika Ninou, Rembetiko won the Silver Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival in 1984.

Born in Athens in 1939, Xarchakos is one of Greece’s best-known composers and conductors. In September, he also conducted a concert on Lycabettus Hill marking more than six decades of work.

Minotaur opens the 67th festival

Overall, the Thessaloniki Film Festival runs from 5 to 15 November in cinemas and online. In total, 258 films will screen, the organisers said.

Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Minotaur, winner of the Grand Prix at Cannes, opens the event. Later that night, singer Pavlos Pavlidis plays a free concert at Warehouse C in the port.

Then, May el-Toukhy’s Woman Unknown closes the festival. The film won the Golden Lion in Venice.

In addition, Spanish director Oliver Laxe, who made Sirât, curates the tribute Welcome to the Desert. He chose all 17 of its films himself.

International guests also include film theorist Laura Mulvey, Turkish director Emin Alper, German director Fatih Akin and Danish actor Claes Bang.

Greek names at the Thessaloniki Film Festival

Director Nikos Grammatikos will also receive a Golden Alexander, along with a tribute to his work.

At the same time, award-winning editor Yorgos Mavropsaridis joins a talk with director Sara Driver, actor Trine Dyrholm and producers Konstantinos Kontovrakis and Rodrigo Areias. Actor and director Christopher Papakaliatis is ambassador of this year’s Agora, the festival’s industry market.

Greek cinema has a strong presence, with 26 feature films and 28 shorts. Highlights include a restored copy of Maria Plyta’s Eva (1953) and Dinos Dimopoulos’s Happy Beginning (1954).

New Greek titles include Alexis Alexiou’s Sea of Glass and Renos Haralambidis’s The Classic Masterpiece. Four international competition sections also offer significant cash prizes.

Deputy Culture Minister Iasonas Fotilas praised the event as organisers presented the lineup. “The Thessaloniki Film Festival is our national celebration of cinema, which the city has embraced. It leads in Greece. It leads in Europe. It leads in the whole world,” he said.

“Because the love and persistence of Thessaloniki, especially of its young people, built and established the festival,” Fotilas added.

Previously, India Moore opened the star-studded festival in 2025. The full 2026 lineup is on the festival’s website.

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