Lights, Camera, Greece: Houston Greek Film Festival Returns

If there’s one thing Kosta Papasideris wants you to know, it’s that there’s more to Greek culture than Socrates, gyros, and wine – and that the film world already knows it.

“Greece is becoming a hub for film, for development, for sourcing talent, and for production,” says the co-founder and executive director of the Houston Greek Film Festival, which returns to the MATCH from December 5-8.

Papasideris founded the festival in 2018 with his wife, Anastasia, and their friends Paula Varsamis and Max Weimmer. Each year since, the festival screens a selection of the best Greek and Cypriot cinema from all around the world – both short- and feature-length films – to “open the cultural door” to Greece.

“All four of us are very involved in the Greek community,” says Papasideris. “And one day, we were just thinking, ‘What else could we do?’”

With the goal of bringing cultural awareness and having some fun along the way, it wasn’t long before they identified one specific cultural need – film.

“There’s a lot of activity in San Francisco and in New York, so you got the coasts covered, and we’re like, ‘There’s literally nothing in between,’” says Papasideris. “And we thought, ‘Why don’t we just do a film festival?’ That’s how easily or simply it started.”

Despite admitting that the four were in over their heads, Papasideris says they knew the festival would be a success the first night of the inaugural festival when they packed their theater space at the MATCH, the festival’s home for its seven-year existence.

“We were basically just some people putting a film festival together, but we immediately knew that we were going to be around for year two,” says Papasideris.

Papasideris was so sure, the self-described “renegade CEO” announced that night that not only would the festival return, it would be sponsored by the Greek Consulate in Houston.

“He had no idea I was going to say this,” says Papasideris. “But I was just like, if you say it out loud, it has to happen, and so it did. They did give us a pretty large grant a couple years later to help us grow in breadth and scope, and they connected us with the cultural ministry in Greece.”

The festival features an open call for films via FilmFreeway, though they also rely on recommendations from film producers and distributors around the world, as well as the contributions of co-founders Varsamis and Weimmer.

Varsamis, who serves as the festival’s director of operations, “scours the internet” and does the research to identify target films, such as the Oscar submissions. “These are the films that we need to show because they played at other film festivals – not just Greek, for example,” says Papasideris, “or they’re the ones that are trending on social media, the ones that are trending in the film space.”

Papasideris says Weimmer, the director of marketing and media and a member of the Houston Film Critics Society, has his “ears to the ground” and “knows what is coming up and what’s out there, what’s streaming, what’s about to stream, and what’s coming out in the theaters.”

The actual selection process is handled by a team of volunteer judges who watch and grade the films before gathering with the founding board members – “We call it ‘Selection Sunday,’” says Papasideris – to decide on the final 10 to 14 feature films to be paired with shorts for the festival.

“We put eyes on every film that comes to our group,” says Papasideris.

Leading this year’s feature film lineup are two Oscar submissions: Greece’s 2023 Oscar submission Behind the Haystacks, which will open the festival and is sponsored by Armaos Realty Group, and the 2024 Oscar submission Murderess (Fonissa), an adaptation of Alexandros Papadiamantis’s famous Greek language novella, sponsored by Nickolas Spiliotis.

Both films will be making their Gulf Coast premiere, as will the “Hollywood-caliber World War II film” Operation Star. Across the full lineup of 19 films (features and shorts), 13 will make their Gulf Coast premiere, four will make their North American premiere, and one will make its world premiere.

“We usually average something like 20 percent that are going to be world or U.S. premieres, and it’s a measure of the quality of the film festival, in my opinion. If you show more and more films as a first, your internal rank and your rank among your sister film festivals go up,” says Papasideris.

One feature film making its North American premiere is The Child Who Measured the World, a French, English, and Greek language film Papasideris calls “great for families” about “a grandfather who didn’t even know he was a grandfather and the shenanigans that come after that knowledge.”

Making a return to the festival is Sew Torn, a film produced by the Houston-born Zavitsanos Brothers, Diamantis and Socratis. Sew Torn, which will be paired with the Sir Ian McKellen-narrated short The One Note Man, is playing the festival for the second time due to its popularity.

“If someone were to ask me, ‘Hey, what’s your best quality film?’ it would be Sew Torn,” says Papasideris, adding that work by the Zavitsanos Brothers has been shown in every festival to date.

Because the festival is the only one “of its kind between, essentially, California and New York,” Papasideris encourages everyone to “come by the Houston Greek Film Festival and see the quality that’s out there.”

“I want to make sure that when people want to go see a foreign film, and they enjoy reading subtitles and learning languages and seeing what other cultures are about through film, that Greece is on their list, and I want it to be on there permanently,” says Papasideris.

Despite the festival’s financial success – “We budget zero, and we don’t go red,” says Papasideris – there is one more metric that’s harder to measure that Papasideris will have his eye on during the festival.

“I do a calculation in my head of folks that I 100 percent know are Greek or philhellenes, as we call people that love Greek culture, versus people that are not Greek and not connected to the Greek community. So, success is that ratio growing,” says Papasideris. “The Greek word is ξένοι, which means non-Greek. The more folks that are there because they enjoy film and want to add Greek film to their enjoyment would make it a success.”

The Houston Greek Film Festival is scheduled for December 5-8 at the MATCH, 3400 Main. For more information, call 832-598-4048 or visit hgff.org. Single screening tickets and multi-screening passes are available for $18-$90.

This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2024.