The Audience premieres in the 61st Thessaloniki International Film Festival

Roads we’ve walked, record stores we’ve browsed, unmistakable market day on Kallidromiou Street, a theater performance, and an audience who also play the lead roles – all in “The Audience”. “The Audience” is a film about a theater audience, and the city they live in. It is also about a theater piece that we only get to know through narrations describing it. The audience that goes to see a play in a venue. The audience leaving the venue right after the show ends. The camera follows eleven audience members, and their stories as they unfold, to create eleven short-form films.

What are the stories of the people who go to see a theater piece? How much their lives are transformed by that experience? To which extent what they saw is modified by their memories? How it is to become a character in your own city? Which effect transforms an audience into protagonists?

“The Audience” was shot in Athens, Greece, commissioned and produced by Onassis Stegi, Athens and is part of an ongoing project by Mariano Pensotti / Grupo Marea comprising of films about audiences, and their relationship with theater. Sometimes it is just a film, while in other cases it also includes a specific staging as well.

“The Audience” is a film about a theater audience and the city they live in. It is also about a theater piece that we only get to know through narrations describing it. The film starts with an audience that goes to see a play in a venue. We will follow the stories of 11 people during the 24 hours after they attended the theater piece, to see to what extent that play affected their lives. Each story is a short film. The personal stories from the audience are remarkably diverse, but at some point all of them feature someone talking with another person about the theater piece they saw, and we did not. By following their stories and listening to their storytelling about the piece we – as real audience – can reconstruct the play that the fictional audience saw.

What are the stories of the people who go to see a theater piece? How much their lives are transformed by that experience? Which effect transforms an audience into protagonists?

Onassis Stegi commissioned Argentine writer and director Mariano Pensotti to create a site-specific work – his own portrait sketch of Athens. Following trips he made to Greek capital, research he conducted in the city center lasting many months, and a series of interviews with local inhabitants, Mariano Pensotti picked out the Exarchia area as the most fitting neighborhood in which to narrate the history and relate the atmosphere of Athens in cinematic terms.

Exploring the neighborhood’s multiple facets, Pensotti created eleven short films that weave a collective portrait of Exarchia, combining little stories about disparate people as they interact within the city. Residents, restaurant and open-air cinema owners, immigrants, tourists, regulars and passers-by all take on lead roles in a single, communal story that at times follows a clear narrative, and at others has more of a documentary feel.

This is not the first time the Argentine director has presented a work in Athens. Five years ago, in November 2014, Pensotti brought The Past Is a Grotesque Animal to the Onassis Stegi Main Stage as part of Transitions 2 America, a festival dedicated to the contemporary independent Latin American scene under the artistic direction of Katia Arfara.

Commisioned and Produced by Onassis Stegi

Author, Director & Screenwriter: Mariano Pensotti

Project Curator: Katia Arfara

Producers: Dimitra Dernikou, Vassilis Panagiotakopoulos

With: Periklis Moustakis, Anna Κalaitzidou, Mary Mina, Kariofylia Karabeti, Panagiotis Exarcheas, Ioanna Kolliopoulou, Dimitris Xanthopoulos, Lefteris Giakoumakis, Stergios Ioannou, Ilektra Nikolouzou, Kimon Kouris, Alexia Kaltsiki, Zeynab Mehrzad, Zalvazany Zarifah, Ektoras Liatsos, Yiannis Mpakalis, Pinelopi Riga, Iro Bezou, Αιneias Tsamatis, Aris Mpalis, Kostas Berikopoulos, Tomohiro Watanabe

Researcher/Dramaturg/Casting director: Theodora Kapralou

Production Designer: Mariana Tirantte

Music Composer: Diego Vainer

Director of Photography: Soledad Rodríguez

Editor: Agustin Rolandell

Αrt director: Lucas Economopoulos

Costume designer: Lita Kokkonari

Make up Artist: Ioanna Symeonidi

Sound recordist: Dinos Kittou

Production Manager: George Tsitsas

1st Assistant director: Agustín Gagliardi

Production Coordinator: Florencia Wasser

Commissioned and Produced by Onassis Stegi