The Onassis Foundation at the 2022 Drama International Short Film Festival

The Onassis Foundation supports cinema, unleashing the potential and talents of both renowned and up-and-coming filmmakers, and embracing the process of creation, research, and artistic evolution. As of 2020, it collaborates with the major short film festival in our country, the Drama International Short Film Festival, focusing on up-and-coming artists in their first steps, while it further established two film awards in 2021.

For the 45th Drama International Short Film Festival this year, the Onassis Award – a prize awarded by default to any Greek artist that participates in the International Competition Program –was given to the film Under the Lake by Thanassis Trompoukis, who will also receive € 10,000 as a grant for the development of his next project. “Script development requires dedication, methodology, and time. It is an unseen, yet demanding process. It is important to feel that someone is supporting you,” the filmmaker noted. Thanassis Trompoukis was one of the three Greek directors participating in the International Competition; next to him, Evi Kalogiropoulou participated with her film On Xerxes’ Throne and Sofia Georgovassili with Memoir of a Veering Storm. Their films were exempted from the award process, as they are productions of the Onassis Foundation.

Thanasis Troumpoukis - Onassis Development Grant 2022

Moreover, the Queer Drama Award of the Onassis Foundation was awarded for a second consecutive year. The prize is awarded to one of the short films from the National Competition program with an LGBTQ content and is accompanied with a cash prize of € 2,000. This year, the award went to the film Cactus by Dimitris Zouras. As the Jury noted, the film is “a bold look backed ideally by the rising young protagonist’s performance, who staggers in an unfriendly Athens while searching for his inner self.”

Dimitris Zouras - Drama Queer Award 2022

At the same time, two films produced by the Onassis Foundation, On Xerxes’ Throne by Evi Kalogiropoulou and Memoir of a Veering Storm by Sofia Georgovassili, participated in the International and National Competition programs of the Drama Short Film Festival. On Xerxes’ Throne won the special prize of the Jury, which justified it as such: “Because it is a film that portrays the male, female, and non-binary body at the threshold of fluidity and seeks forbidden tenderness and contact within a harsh and archetypically masculine industrial environment.”

“Memoir of a Veering Storm” (2022) by Sofia Georgovassili had its world premiere at the Berlinale – Berlin International Film Festival as part of its Generation competition program. The film unfolds one September morning as a storm bears down on the city. A 15-year-old girl skips school and, with the help of her boyfriend, heads to hospital where she must face a sudden jolt into adulthood. Director Sofia Georgovassili developed the screenplay for this short with the support of Onassis Culture, as part of the Onassis Cinema in Development program.

Film Still of "Memoir of a Veering Storm" by Sofia Georgovassili

“On Xerxes’ Throne” by Evi Kalogiropoulou premiered as part of Critic’s Week at the 75th Cannes Film Festival (May 18-26, 2022), a parallel competition section at this European cinema institution that features works by filmmakers from around the world. There, the film won the major French television network Canal+ Short Film Award for its approach to an ancient Greek story, juxtaposing its materials in exceptionally inspired ways within an otherworldly landscape. Kalogiropoulou’s first version of the film – titled “I Belong to Me” – was commissioned for the “You and AI: Through the Algorithmic Lens” exhibition, presented by Onassis Stegi at Pedion tou Areos park in Athens (06.24–07.25.2021), exploring the themes of algorithms and artificial intelligence, creativity and ethics, and curated by Afroditi Panagiotakou, Director of Culture at the Onassis Foundation. The film was shot at Hellenic Shipyards S.A. in Perama in June 2021.