Thessaloniki's 67th Edition Lines Up Two Competitions, Nov. 5–15

The Thessaloniki International Film Festival's 67th edition runs Nov. 5 to 15, and it has announced the lineups of two competition sections: Meet the Neighbors+ and >>Film Forward. One of the names in Meet the Neighbors+ is Blerta Basholli, who won at Sundance with 'Hive' and comes to Thessaloniki with a Kosovan War film. Sections built around regional and cross-border work are where a festival can be most useful to a director: a prize at Sundance establishes a reputation, and what a filmmaker needs immediately afterward is somewhere the next film can be seen by the programmers, critics and buyers who weren't in Park City. A Kosovan War film premiering in a Greek competition is also a reminder that the region's festivals sit close enough to these histories to program them as neighbours' business.