On Thursday March 6th, at 7.15pm, the film About a Hero by Piotr Winiewicz will signal the official opening of the 27th Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival. The Festival will call it a wrap on Sunday March 16th, with Shoshannah Stern’s Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore that unravels the story of Marlee Matlin, the first ever deaf recipient of an Academy Award for acting.

The 27th Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival kicks off with the film About a Hero (2024) by Piotr Winiewicz, screened within the framework of the grand tribute “ΑΙ, an inevitable Intelligence”.

When a local factory worker dies under mysterious circumstances, Werner Herzog travels to Getunkirchenburg to investigate his perplexing death. However, Herzog is not who he seems, nor is the film what we expect… About a Hero is an adaptation of a script written by an AI trained on Herzog’s body of work.

The fictional narrative it produced, ironically self-reflective, is intertwined with a series of interviews with artists, philosophers and scientists reflecting on the notion of originality, authenticity, immortality, and the soul in the age of AI.

The opening ceremony’s hosts will be no other than the talented children from the Greek National Robotics Team, who recently took part in the World Robot Olympiad held in South Korea, winning an impressive total of eight medals. Admission at the opening ceremony is upon presentation of an invitation, whereas a limited number of tickets will also be issued.

The opening ceremony will be followed by a live performance by Turboflow 3000 at Warehouse C, with a free admission for the audience. Deezy, André και Primal have teamed up over the recent years, having shaped a hybrid musical style interweaving electro, hip hop and punk. DJ set: Bellas. Free admission for the public.

ΑΙ, an Inevitable Intelligence: The 27th TiDF’s grand tribute to Artificial Intelligence

Αrtificial Intelligence is no longer a sci-fi scenario – it’s here and it’s changing the world around us. How does it affect our everyday lives? What status does it hold in art and cinema in particular? Where does human creativity come to a halt and where does the algorithm take over? The AI, an Inevitable Intelligence tribute of the 27th Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival (6-16 March, 2025) invites the audience to embark on a fascinating journey that includes a selection of eye-opening documentaries, an impressive visual installation, a masterclass, a special two-language edition, as well as the Festival’s magazine First Shot, co-created this year with the help of AI as a form of experimentation. A cinematic exploration of the new reality, standing in the threshold between the man-made and the digital.

The films: Films that delve into the different aspects of Artificial Intelligence will be screened as part of the tribute. Among them we encounter The Hexagonal Hive and a Mouse in a Maze directed by Tilda Swinton, an intriguing journey inside the mechanisms of learning and how it has come to be influenced by technology. The Biography of a Software by George Drivas, an audiovisual conversation with a smart software, is the first medium-length Greek film entirely made by AI. The Festival’s lineup is also featuring, among others, About a Hero, a film adaptation of a script written by an AI engine that has studied the work of Werner Herzog.

Visual installation: Within the framework of the 27th Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival, the Festival’s grand sponsor COSMOTE, member of the TELEKOM Group, is proposing a unique experience that intertwines art and AI technology. LAUREN: Anyone Home? by artist and UCLA professor Lauren Lee McCarthy will be showcased at MOMus-Experimental Center for the Arts (Pier A, Port of Thessaloniki).

Masterclass: Within the tribute’s context, on Sunday March 9th at 12pm, at Pavlos Zannas theater, the masterclass AI and ART EXPERIENCE powered by Telekom will be held, giving the audience the chance to take a glance on the thrilling relation between AI and art. Actress Stefania Goulioti, visual artist and director George Drivas, the founder and president of the Institute of Philosophy and Technology Giannis Stamatelos, songwriter Kostis Maraveyas, artist and UCLA professor Lauren Lee McCarthy will discuss on the possibilities and challenges involved in the use of Artificial Intelligence in art, opening a window on the future of creation. Their goal is to explore the boundaries of artistic creation.

The Festival’s editions: The Festival’s special edition dedicated to AI will include texts written by academics, artists, journalists and tech specialists, analyzing a series of issues that have emanated from the evolution and widespread use of AI over the last years. Moreover, Festival’s magazine First Shot, having Artificial Intelligence at its core, will be the outcome of an extended dialogue with AI.

27th Thessaloniki Documentary Festival

The 27th Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival will be held from Thursday 6th to Sunday 16th March 2025 both in physical spaces and online. A total of 261 documentaries will be screened as part of the 27th TiDF, among which an impressive number of 72 world, 40 international and 11 European premieres.

The Festival will take place in its time-honored home ground, the movie theaters Olympion and Pavlos Zannas at the Olympion complex, the movie theaters Frida Liappa, Tonia Marketaki, John Cassavetes and Stavros Tornes at the Port of Thessaloniki, as well as Makedonikon theater. Moreover, the audience will have the chance to watch movies online, through the Festival’s digital platform.

The Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival assigned choreographer Andi Xhuma to direct the spots of its 27th edition, exploring the affinities between cinema and the performative arts.

Iconic landmarks of Thessaloniki, as well as a series of beloved hubs, buildings and spots that beat to the Festival’s pulse, take center stage at the 27th TiDF’s spots. We embark on a wandering across the city, starting from the Heptapyrgion fortress and reaching all the way to the heart of the urban metropolis, at the Port’s Pier A and the historical home ground of the Festival, the Olympion complex.

Amidst the anonymity and the rituality of the dark theater, but also out in the open, in the bustling and uninterrupted energy of the streets and the port, the aery and pulsating choreography by Andi Xhuma can be interpreted as an ode to personal expression, as a call to liberation from any form of restraints, but also as a celebratory reassertion of the ancestral ties between the people and their homeland.

About a Hero
Director: Piotr Winiewicz
Stars: Imme Beccard, Steffen Böye, Thomas Ebert, Vicky Krieps
Release Year: 2024
Countries of Origin: Denmark, United States
Duration: 84 minutes