ARTWORKS collaborates with the Greek Film Archive and offers for the second consecutive year the ARTWORKS Best Film Award within the competition Reframing Images at the Athens Avant Garde Film Festival (3-18 December, 2025). The award is generously supported by Katherine Embiricos, an executive producer of numerous internationally acclaimed documentaries, championing fresh, boundary-pushing approaches to filmmaking.
The jury of the competition section consists of SNF ARTWORKS Fellows Jacqueline Lentzou, Theo Prodromides and Yorgos Zois.
Jacqueline Lentzou
Theo Prodromides
Yorgos Zois
Within the competitive section Reframing Images, 24 films will be screened in their Greek premiere, showcasing a variety of aesthetic trends and composing a polyphonic landscape of contemporary international cinema and moving-image art.
For the second consecutive year, the Reframing Images Competition Section aims to highlight creators who explore innovative forms of storytelling and cinematic form.
Through a spectrum of analog and digital media and techniques – 8mm and 16mm film, in-camera effects, video, handmade animation, archival material, performativity, digital imagery, artificial intelligence — the creators investigate the meeting ground between the real and the imaginary.
At the same time, two round tables dedicated to the creative practices will be moderated on Sunday, 7/12 (at the Greek Film Archive) by Stamatis Schizakis, curator of the Department of Photography and Audiovisual Works at the National Museum of Contemporary Art (EMST), and on Saturday, 13/12 (at the Greek Film Archive) by Maria Thaleia-Karra, curator and founder of TAVROS.
Reframing Images | Roundtable 1
Sunday 7/12, 14:30 @ Greek Film Archive (Tainiothiki)
Exploring the Layers of the Visible: Experimental and Hybrid Cinematic Form
Moderator: Stamatis Schizakis, curator of the Department of Photography and Audiovisual Works at the National Museum of Contemporary Art (EMST)
Participating artists: Sofia Dona, Pauline Rigal, Viktoria Schmid, Armand Yervant Tufenkia
Sofia Dona
Sofia Dona is a visual artist based in Athens and Munich. Her installations and video works challenge familiar spatial and social structures, focusing on interruptions and breaks in historical narratives or everyday life that expose hidden systems of power and control. Her work has been presented internationally at venues such as Gropius Haus (Bauhaus Foundation), Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, Instituto Municipal de Arte y Cultura (Tijuana), nGbK (Berlin), Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo (Turin), and EMST (Athens).
Pauline Rigal
Born in 1991, Pauline Rigal creates films that explore the physical properties of filmic motion and visions related to the earth’s mineral qualities and nature as the birthplace of images. Blending documentary lyricism with fable-like narratives through the medium of photochemical film, her work sculpts luminous imprints. In 2018, she co-founded the cinema magazine Les Saisons, dedicated to film-writing practices, publishing texts by Tacita Dean, Robert Gardner, Lav Diaz, Sharon Lockhart, Deborah Stratman, Helga Fanderl, and others.
Viktoria Schmid
Viktoria Schmid (b. 1986) is a Vienna-based visual artist and filmmaker. Working across film, sculpture, and photography, her practice investigates historical image-making processes, the representation of nature, and the development of cinema, often allowing the medium itself to act as a co-author. Her work has been exhibited at Belvedere 21 and Kunsthaus Graz and screened at festivals such as TIFF, Viennale, and Rotterdam. Her distinctions include the Austrian Short Film Award (2023) and the State Stipend for Photography (2022). She studied at the Friedl Kubelka School and holds an MA from the University of Art, Linz.
Armand Yervant Tufenkian
Armand Yervant Tufenkian (b. 1988) is a filmmaker and lecturer. His eclectic background includes doctoral studies at Duke University, filmmaking at CalArts, work as a fire lookout in the Sierra Nevada, and life on a communal farm in France. His earlier films include in lightning Agnes (2014) and Accession (2018). His debut feature, In the Manner of Smoke (2025), premiered at Cinéma du Réel, where it won the International Award; it is accompanied by a lecture-performance and manuscript titled Sfumato. He currently teaches cinema at Binghamton University.
Reframing Images | Roundtable 2
Saturday 13/12, 14:30 @ Greek Film Archive (Tainiothiki)
Territory, Landscape, Architecture: holding spaces, bringing new imaginaries
Moderators: Maria Thaleia-Karras (curator and founder of TAVROS) & Alkistis Efthymiou (social anthropologist, writer and filmmaker)
Participating artists: Basma al-Sharif, Elena Duque, Marina Gioti, Maureen Fazendeiro, Marta Popivoda, Marina Xenofontos
Basma al-Sharif
Basma al-Sharif (b. 1983) is a Palestinian artist and filmmaker. Her work explores cyclical political histories, moving backward and forward in time through satirical, immersive, and lyrical films and installations to confront the legacy of colonialism. Recent solo exhibitions include De Appel, Amsterdam (2024) and the Art Institute of Chicago (2022). Her work has been featured at the Kochi-Muziris Biennale (2022) and Centre Pompidou-Metz (2025). A 2022-23 Berlin Artistic Research Fellow and 2024 Prix Aware nominee, she is represented by Imane Farès Galerie and lives in Berlin.
Elena Duque
Elena Duque is a Spanish-Venezuelan filmmaker, writer, and curator whose work moves between animation and collage to explore identity, belonging, and material memory through analog textures. Her films have screened at major festivals including Rotterdam, Berlinale, Mar del Plata, Punto de Vista, and Documenta Madrid, and at venues such as Kino Arsenal (Berlin) and CCCB (Barcelona). A programmer at (S8) Mostra de Cinema Periférico, she is also a published author and teaches film and animation in Madrid.
Marina Gioti
Marina Gioti is visual artist and filmmaker based in Athens. Her films and installations have been presented worldwide at numerous solo and group exhibitions, biennials and film festivals, including Toronto and Berlinale.In 2017 she participated in Documenta 14 in Athens and Kassel. She is the laureate of the 2022 Prix COAL for Art and Ecology and currently artist-in-residence at the Center for Genomics and Systems Biology, New York University Abu Dhabi.
Maureen Fazendeiro
Maureen Fazendeiro (b. 1989, Créteil, France) is a Lisbon-based director and screenwriter. After studying in Paris, her early works—including Motu Maeva (2014) and Sol Negro (2019)—premiered at major festivals like FID Marseille and TIFF Wavelength. She frequently collaborates with Miguel Gomes, co-directing The Tsugua Diaries (Director’s Fortnight 2021) and co-writing his upcoming Savagery. Her work has been screened globally from MoMA to the Venice Biennale. Her debut feature-length documentary, The Seasons, received the Boccalino D’Oro Award for Best Contribution to Cinematic Language at the Locarno Film Festival 2025.
Marta Popivoda
Marta Popivoda is a filmmaker and artist whose work explores memory, history, and ideology from a feminist and queer perspective. Shown at Berlinale, IFFR, MoMA, Tate, MAXXI, etc., and winner of numerous awards, she teaches film at the AHK in Amsterdam and is a member of the European Film Academy.
Marina Xenofontos
Marina Xenofontos (b. 1988, Limassol, Cyprus) works with film and sculpture, exploring failure and the marginalisation of personal narratives. Her films include I don’t sleep, I dream (2011), We were supposed to have fun (2011–ongoing), Twice Upon a While (2018), Sunlight Vandalism (2019), and Overnight Coup (2025).
Information about all the films in the Reframing Images competition section:
http://www.tainiothiki.gr/el/14-programmata/reframing-images
Athens Avant Garde Film Festival 14 (AAGFF14)
3-18 December 2025
Greek Film Archive
Iera Odos 48 & Megalou Alexandrou 134-136
Keramikos
