Since its inaugural edition at the 60th Thessaloniki Film Festival in 2019, the Meet the Future program has offered a look ahead to the next generation of emerging film talents set to make waves in Greece, the wider Mediterranean region and beyond.
After training the spotlight on up-and-coming documentary filmmakers from Serbia, who presented five projects in post-production to industry guests at last year’s Thessaloniki Documentary Festival, the focus shifts this year to Georgia, a country that’s seen its cinema profile rise in recent years on the strength of directors including acclaimed docmaker Salomé Jashi, whose arresting feature “Taming the Garden” (pictured) played in the Sundance World Cinema Documentary Competition.
Yianna Sarri, the head of the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival’s industry arm, Agora, considers herself “one of the biggest fans of Georgian cinema for many years now.” “They make beautiful cinema,” she said, adding that she had “this [Georgian focus] in mind for a very long time.”
In collaboration with the Georgian Film Center, Thessaloniki presents five up-and-coming Georgian documentary filmmakers who will present their next projects during a special Meet the Future showcase on March 15.
Here are this year’s participants: