The 63rd Berlin Film Festival of Berlin (Berlinale) opens its gates from February 7 to February 17; with around 300,000 tickets sold, almost 20,000 professional visitors from 130 countries, including about 4,000 journalists and 5 Greek films to be screened in the most experimental avant garde section of the Festival, Forum.

Upheaval, unrest and social transition are the dominant themes of this year’s Forum, whic are also reflected  in the Greek cinematographers’ work: I aionia epistrofi tou Antoni Paraskeua (The Eternal Return of Antonis Paraskevas) by Elina Psykou follows the fate of a TV presenter, who stages his own abduction in a desperate attempt to remain on the spotlight- a surreal commentary on Greece’s current state.

I kóri (The Daughter) by Thanos Anastopoulos tells the story of a teenage girl who kidnaps the son of her father’s business partner whom she blames for his bankruptcy.

Sto lyko (To the Wolf) by Christina Koutsospyrou and Aran Hughes, a quasi- documentaristic allegory about poverty spreading all over Europe.

Fynbos by Harry Patramanis, shot in South Africa, weaves an enigmatic story around a glass mansion, Fynbos, where dreams turn into nightmares. In Echolot by Athanasios Karanikolas, some friends gather to perform their own special funeral ceremony for a friend who has committed suicide.

In the meantime, after walking the streets of Vienna philosophizing all night (Before Sunrise) and their Paris encounter nine years later (Before Sunset), Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy try to recapture their romance in Messinia, in the third part of the trilogy, Before Midnight, which will be screened in the competition section.

The US-Greek production, shot in the ravishing landscapes of South-west Peloponnese, and also starring Greek actress Xenia Kalogeropoulou, follows the pair nine years further down the road, where the world, emotions and relationships are once again the focus of the conversation.

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Avant-garde director Yorgos Lanthimos won this year’s ARTE international Prize for the Best CineMart 2013 project at Rotterdam’s International Film Festival for his latest project The Lobster. The Lobster, which will be Lanthimos’ fifth feature film, is "an unconventional love story set in a dystopian near future”, where single people are arrested and obliged to find a matching mate in 45 days.

The jury awarded the prize to "a very exciting and original project from one of the most talented emerging filmmakers of the last decade."
Thirty-two films participated at the CineMart, a co-production market of Rotterdam’s festival, which serves as a platform for projects seeking additional financing.
This is the second year in a row that the prize is awarded to a Greek director, as Athina-Rachel Tsangaris won last year’s prize for her project Ducharon.