2012 Greek Film Festival
Palace Centro
39 James St
Fortitude Valley
Nov 1-4
A $17.50 Conc avail
Open Night $45
3852 4488
Website

Good things come in small packages and so does The Greek Film Festival, a six film affair showing over 4 days at the Palace Centro.

From the country who gave us the ancient stories whose themes still form the basis of today's story-telling, here's a chance to see the best-of films from the past 2 years, opening with a comedy and closing with a drama:

Nisos 2 (Nov 1 6.30pm) – Opening the festival is the comedy sequel to the block-buster Opening Night from 2 years ago with the the laughs continuing in the ongoing search for buried treasure in the Greek Islands. Various 'alliances' and spurious friendships occur as they hunt for the buried treasure and in the process reunite with the islanders known and loved from the first film. This includes the ghost of Olympia who has the whole island in a stir...or is it actually Olympia?

Wasted Youth (Nov 2 7pm) – After the light start the intensity kicks in, with spellbinding drama Wasted Youth, a Rotterdam Film Festival nominated film inspired by the tragic shooting of Alexandros Grigoropoulos and revolving around a young skate-punk (Haris Markou) and a policeman (Ieronymos Kaletsanos).

City of Children (Nov 3 4pm) – Touted as being not for the faint-hearted, this multi-award winning edgy drama follows a day-in-the-life of four pregnant couples in modern Athens, with stories that are bereft of hope and joy. City of Children won Best Special Effects and Best Script at last year's Hellenic Film Academy, Best Actress Award for Kika Georgiou as well as the Critics Award at the Thessaloniki International Film Festival.

Jerks (Nov 3 7pm) – Director Stelios Kammitsis's debut feature film is an intensely powerful story of three friends as they spend the last12 hours of their life in Greece before trying a new beginning in Berlin. By morning their lives have indeed changed forever but not in they had hoped for, in this story that highlights the angst of a disenfranchised youth.

Poker Face (Nov 4 4pm) – Sunday afternoon's offering is a light return to comedy with Niki, a girl whose father spends too much time gambling and as a result she has spent an inordinate amount of time with her parrot come lucky charm, which gets stolen and, as bad luck would have it, her father goes to jail. Fast forward some years later and as a writer for a lifestyle magazine Niki comes face to face with the parrot thief, a poker champion when she is asked to interview him, a situation for which she has other plans.

Dead Europe (Nov 4 7pm) – Based on the novel by Melbourne writer Christos Tsiolkas this intense deeply wrought drama follows Isaac, who after his father's funeral takes the ashes back to his father's birthplace in Greece and he finds himself on the trail of a buried family secret. An Australian of Greek parents who feels little connection with his ancestors, Isaac is drawn further and further down into the underbelly of contemporary Europe – a cemetery of dark revelations threatening to tear his family apart.