Tickets to Rochester screenings will be sold at the door.
From filmmaker Christos Georgio, Happy Birthday tells the story of a broken family in a world of turmoil, and the family’s fight to survive. The central narrative is set in an unsettled Greece and follows riot squad officer Yiorgos (Dimitris Imellos) and his increasingly strained relationship with his teenage daughter Margarita (Nefeli Kouri). Their already fragile bond severs when Yiorgos, while celebrating his birthday with fellow officers, sees Margarita with a group of demonstrators in a fog of teargas.
Realizing they are on opposing ends of the conflict, Yiorgos returns home to a tense encounter with the Margarita. The family matriarch Sofia (Mirto Aikiki) rises above the ensuing arguments to make a suggestion—a road trip to the family’s neglected summer house. Reluctantly the two agree, and what follows is a journey shared by two clashing wills that will not, and perhaps cannot, come to an understanding.
Director Biography
Christos Georgiou was born in London U.K. in 1966. He did his basic education in Cyprus and further studies in England at the University of Warwick (Film and Literature BA Joint Hons), the Northern Film and TV School in Leeds (MA Film Production), and in Poland at the National Film TV and Theatre School in Lodz (EU Tempus scholarship – Film Writing and Direction). He has directed, written and produced, fiction feature films, documentaries, commercials and TV drama series for ARTE, ZDF, Al Jazeera, the BBC, as well as several Greek TV channels.
Under the Stars his first fiction feature film won 6 International awards including the prestigious, Prix de Montreal, (Best First Feature Film) at the Montreal International Film Festival 2001. Small Crime his second fiction feature film was selected for competition at several film festivals including Palm Spring and Karlovy Vary, and was a box office hit in Germany in the summer of 2009. Happy Birthday an official selection at Berlinale Co Production Market is his third fiction feature film and had its international premiere at the Sao Paulo IFF 2017.
He is a founding member and a member of the board of the Hellenic Film Academy
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