From AI to Greek country life: highlights from Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival 2025

With algorithms now dictating our choices, and artificial intelligence infiltrating our private lives, technology – and our anxiety about it – was understandably on the agenda at this year’s Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival. But the theme was at its least convincing in festival opener About a Hero. Piotr Winiewicz’s film is based on a script generated by an AI model (named Kaspar) trained on Werner Herzog’s work, but while the German auteur appears to be the narrator of the film, it neither looks like him nor do the results feel like something he would have made.

Much more interesting was the festival’s strand AI, An Inevitable Intelligence, especially Henri Poulain’s film In the Belly of AI, a forensic documentary exposing a darker side of the now ubiquitous technology. Poulain and his team reveal how AI data work is outsourced around the world, often to countries facing economic crises. Several testimonials in the film are from data workers in the global south who have developed psychological issues and feelings of isolation after working with content involving verbal and physical abuse. 

Five women acting against social media sites Meta, TikTok, X, Snapchat and Discord are the focus of Élisa Jadot’s The Social Trap: 5 Women vs the Big 5. Algorithms are examined from a fake adolescent Instagram account, which was created to demonstrate how teenagers and even younger children have been exposed to suicide-related content through their smartphones. Jadot follows a former screen addict, a mother of three, a psychiatrist, a cybercrime police officer and a lawyer who are fighting to change the law that protects the digital tech giants who are using children as pawns in their race for profit.

Brittany Shyne’s directorial debut Seeds, getting its international premiere here, was a remarkable discovery. Shyne’s film follows a farmer’s family in Georgia to tell the story of Black American farmers and their ongoing battle for fair play in an unjust agriculture system. Captivating black-and-white photography is accompanied by a soundtrack of jazz beats and the echoes of operating harvest machines – an astonishing union of image and sound that adds up to an urgent reflection on ongoing systemic racism in the US.

In Lo, a year after his mother’s death, film lecturer turned director Thanassis Vassiliou returns to the empty Athens apartment of his childhood in order to resolve a complicated inheritance. This deeply personal essay about family ties and neglect sees him muddling through photos, books and memories of an absent father. Despite the film’s overall sorrowful ambience, it’s the touching relationship between the director and his mother and grandfather, while growing up in the 70s, that makes the film so emotionally resonant. Vassiliou takes his camera to the streets of Athens in a bid to articulate the collective trauma of the 1967 to 1974 military junta.

Another remarkable debut in the programme was Grace Hughes-Hallett’s gripping documentary The Secret of Me, which follows Louisiana native Jim Ambrose, who grew up as a girl called Kristi but, during feminist college studies at age 19, discovered shocking truths about her upbringing. Hughes-Hallett’s film examines the damaging long-term impacts of a medical policy encouraging surgery on intersex kids.

Conversely, Gianluca Matarrese’s Gen_, the winner of the festival’s Mermaid award, provided a fascinating story of hope for adults. It follows charismatic Doctor Maurizio Bini consulting childless couples and transgender people, at Milan’s Niguarda public hospital, who are desperate for change. The film includes thought-provoking conversations between Doctor Bini and his patients, as well as exploring his love for music, nature and languages.

A special screening of Mr. Nobody Against Putin by David Borenstein and Pavel Ilyich Talankin, which recently premiered at Sundance, presented a picture of resistance in a country brainwashed by propaganda. Shortly after Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin imposed a federal policy restructuring the curriculum at schools and forcing teachers to support the war. Pasha, a videographer and events coordinator in a primary school in Karabash, starts recording the changes being enforced and illustrates the impact that this has had on children three years on.

Early during the festival’s run, French director Nicolas Philibert was honoured with the Golden Alexander award for his contribution to cinema. The event at the Olympion venue kicked off a spotlight on his most recent films, including On the Adamant, his Berlin Golden Bear-winning documentary about a Parisian day-care centre and the healing nature of art. The festival also offered a complete retrospective of filmmaker and youth-culture chronicler Lauren Greenfield, beginning with Thin (2006), her powerful debut feature about four girls who enter a private centre in Florida to treat anorexia and bulimia. 

Another strand, Geography of the Gaze: Off-Plan Greece was a popular programme of rare and off-the-radar documentaries from rural Greece made between 1950 and 2000. My favourite was Heracles, Acheloos and My Granny (1997) by Dimitris Koutsiabasakos, a delightful and affectionately received documentary representing the tough life of gentle-hearted locals in the Pindus mountains.

A final mention for esteemed Greek documentarian Eva Stefani’s latest film, Bull’s Heart, which was shown as a work in progress last year but now premiered complete. Its subject is choreographer Dimitris Papaioannou, with Stefani’s film recording the rehearsals and the tour of his Transverse Orientation, which performed in over 30 cities from 2021 to 2022, including London. 

Filmed during Covid, and leading up to the final show in San Francisco, Bull’s Heart follows his various production challenges and conversations with his dancers. Papaioannou’s art is shown as a special form of resistance, blending dance and theatre with striking stage sets and drawing inspiration from mythology and art history.

Thessaloniki Documentary Film Festival ran 6 to 16 March.