The 65th Thessaloniki International Film Festival posters bear the signature of the acclaimed visual artist Stella Kapezanou, drawing inspiration from the Festival’s grand tribute “We, the Monster” and foregrounding the multiple aspects of womanhood through her work.

Monsters were born almost simultaneously with storytelling, the creation of narrative and the universal and timeless need to give shape and form to our fears, in order to cope with them and face them, and over the centuries they served as a source of inspiration for countless stories of horror, love and acceptance. Gradually, as Western societies acquired structures and regulations, trying to tame the unspoken and the incomprehensible, monsters were banished from the organized frame of society.

The era in which gods and demons, mortals and myths, humans and monsters co-existed, was now gone. The monsters returned to their dark womb, to primeval nature: they inhabited the forests and mountains, the depths of caves and the bottom of the sea. And the danger that this unseen force and this forbidden presence began to pose, acquired almost inevitably an irresistible allure.

Strange and mysterious creatures, monsters that live next to and within us, are featured in the big tribute of the 65th Thessaloniki International Film Festival (October 31st to November 10th, 2024), titled We, the Monster, which continues and enhances last year’s tribute FANT SM S. The tribute is curated by the internationally renowned Carlo Chatrian, former Artistic Director of the Berlin and Locarno Film Festivals, film critic, writer and programmer. The audience will have the opportunity to watch more than 20 masterpieces of world cinema, which explore and run through the complex and fascinating symbolisms and riddles that hide in all kinds of monsters.

Monsters were used from the very beginning as a symbol in literature and painting, most of the time in order to express the unknown, the unfamiliar, the gaze of otherness. Cinema soon followed.

“Giving shape and body to fears and desires, the monster touches upon the very quintessence of cinema. When we think of exceptional, unique, unforgettable images, it is not towards the perfection of beauty that we turn. Films are at the same time an open window into the unknown and a deforming but profoundly accurate mirror of our inner nature. Often shown as the “enemy”, monsters have just as often become a lens through which we can grasp the otherness of our societies, the monstrosity that dwells within each one of us and the natural impulse to understand and accept what is different», says Carlo Chatrian.

The reasoning behind the posters of the 65th TIFF:

The visual artist drew inspiration from the Festival’s grand tribute to monsters, titled “We, the Monster”, foregrounding the multiple aspects of womanhood through her work.

In the artist’s words: “In my work Corn Maidens (2024), I sought to portray intercultural symbols, forging a visual art language where mythologies and psychological references are intertwined in a dance-ode to the divine woman power, but also to Mother Nature, unraveling her two-fold identity as a source of creation (nutritious corn) and destruction (fire). Alluding to the 65th TIFF’s tribute “We, the Monster”, this painted scene brings together the “maidens” who devote their youth to praying for the new yield in accordance with the indigenous traditions of the American natives, featuring the corn as a life-bearing fruit used in ritual ceremonies, the blood as a signal of pain and of the beginning of a new cycle of life, the crows as symbols of the spirit, messengers between different dimensions and ambivalent protectors against evil (just like black cats). The female ‘monsters’ of my creation are engulfed in flames, amidst a hellish party, radiant and lustful at once, finally given the chance in the year 2024 to indulge in pleasure.

The artist’s CV:

Stella Kapezanou is a visual artist based in Athens, Greece. She studied Painting at the Athens School of Fine Arts where she received an honorary scholarship from the State Scholarship Foundation (IKY) for achieving first place in the admission examinations. She also holds a Master’s Degree in Fine Arts from the Chelsea College of Arts, London, UK, where she studied under a fully funded, double scholarship from Motor Oil Hellas and the Sir Frank Bowling Scholarship. She is the recipient of the Fulbright Foundation Artistic Scholarship 2024 for the international artist residency at the Santa Fe Art Institute in New Mexico, USA. Her more recent works delve into the concept of sovereignty as a power emanating from the female body, further developing the research around issues of gender, bodily autonomy, and self-determination that characterizes her work. She has been awarded the Clyde & Co Emerging Star Award, as well as the Cass Art Prize.

She has participated as an artist-in-residence in renowned institutions and residency programs such as CARV Residency, Cyprus (2023), iAR Residency, Istanbul (2020), AucArt LAB Residency, London (2019), Goethe-Institut Bonn, Cologne and Berlin (2014) etc. She has presented her work internationally in solo exhibitions, the most recent being Corn Maidens, The Opening Gallery, New York (2024). Finally, group shows include Unapologetic WomXn, Ross Sutton Gallery, Venice, Italy (2024); Sunburn, Studio West Gallery, London, UK (2023); Stigma, Dromokaitio Psychiatric Hospital of Athens, GR (2023); Now Women, Fougaro, Nafplio, GR (2023); Contemporary Now, The Edit Gallery, Nicosia, CY (2022); Lusus Naturae, BcmA Gallery, Berlin, DE (2021); iAR Project, Akaretler Gallery, Istanbul, TR (2020); Love is a Dog from Hell, Frissiras Museum, Athens, GR (2019).

The 65th Thessaloniki International Film Festival is held by October 31st to November 10th, 2024.