Magnetic Fields 1

Source: Courtesy of Heretic

Magnetic Fields

Newcomer Yorgos Gousis’s Magnetic Fields and Grigoris Karantinakis’ second film Smyrna have dominated the 2022 Iris film awards of the Hellenic Film Academy.

Magnetic Fields won for best film, first- time director, screenplay and best actress prizes, while Smyrna was awarded the trophies for best cinematography, production design and costume design.

Scroll down for the full list of winners

Magnetic Fields is a road movie about a man and a woman who have met by chance on a boat and decide to stick together in search of a suitable place to bury a mysterious metallic box.

It premiered at the Thessaloniki International Film Festival in 2021 and was produced byYorgos Karnavas and Konstantinos Kontovrakis’ local powerhouse Heretic.

Meanwhile, Smyrna, starring Rupert Graves, Susan Hampshire, Jane Lapotaire and local star Mimi Denissi, deals with the massacre of the Greek minority population of the Turkish cosmopolitan city of Smyrna in 1922 by the Turkish army. It is produced by Dionyssis Samiotis for Tanweer with Fenia Kossovitsa as co-producer, Joseph Samaan as executive producer and Martin Sherman as associate producer.

With a €4.5m budget, Smyrna is the biggest Greek film ever produced and garnered an impressive 250,000 admissions on its release in December 2021. 

First-time director Araceli Lemos was awarded best director for the Locarno 2021 award-winner Holy Emy, about a young Filipina woman searching for the missing links between her strange bleeding condition and her faraway mother’s healing powers.

This was the second year in a row the awards ceremony was held in an open-air theatre because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Iris winners 2022

Best feature film, fiction 
Magnetic Fields by Yorgos Gousias

Best feature film, documentary 
Days And Nights of Dimitra K. by Eva Stefani

Best feature film, fiction (Greek minority co-production) ex-acqueo
Kostas Lambropoulos,Yorgos Kyriakos, Efi Skrobola and Vasils Tzanidis for .Dog directed by Yianna Americanou

Yorgos Karnavas and Konstantinos Kontovrakis for Feathers directed  by Omar El Zohairy

Best director
Araceli Lemos for Holy Emy

Best screenplay  
Yorgos Gousis, Antonis Tsitsiopoulos and Elena Topalidou for Magnetic Fields

Best first-time director
Yorgos Gousis for Magnetic Fields

Best actress
Elena Topalidou, Magnetic Fields

Best actor
Lazaros Georgakopoulos, Moon, 66 Questions

Best supporting actress
Hasmine Killip, Holy Emy

Best supporting actor
Aris Servetalis, Pack of Sheep  

Best cinematography
Simos Sarketzis, Smyrna

Best editing
Smaro Papevangelou, Moon, 66 Questions

Best music
Lefteris Volanis, Magnetic Fields

Best sound
Leandros Dounis and Roland Heap, Monday by Argyris Papadimitropoulos

Best production design
Ilias Ledakis, Giannis Papadopoulos, Mihalis Samiotis, Smyrna

Best costume design 
Fotini Demou, Smyrna