Athina Rachel Tsangari is considered a principal instigator of the Greek New Wave. Her genre-bending films explore power and yearning in gender, class, and alterities. Under the banner of her Athens-based company HAOS FILM, she produced numerous award-winning titles, including Yorgos Lanthimos’ Kinetta (2005), Dogtooth (2009), and Alps (2011), and more recently, Georgis Grigorakis’ Digger (2020). Tsangari’s own directorial career began with the critically acclaimed The Slow Business of Going (2000). Her sophomore feature Attenberg (2010) premiered at Venice competition, where it won the Coppa Volpi and the Lina Mangiacapre directing award.
Chevalier (2015) won Best Film at BFI-London and was nominated for Best Foreign Film at the Independent Spirit Awards. Attenberg and Chevalier were both nominated for competition as Greece’s official submissions for Best International Film at the Academy Awards. Her latest film Harvest, a neo-western shot in the Scottish Highlands starring Caleb Landry Jones and Harry Melling, premiered at Venice competition in September 2024 and will soon be released in theaters. In addition to these cinematic efforts, Tsangari’s practice has often extended into the territory of art, as with The Capsule (2012), her gothic sunshine-noir film and video installation, which was included in Documenta 13. Tsangari has served on juries at the Cannes, Berlin, Locarno, Sundance, Toronto, Ficunam CDMX, Cinéma du Reel (Paris) and Visions du Réel (Nyon) film festivals, and as jury president in Venice, Götteborg, and BFI London. She has taught cinema at Harvard, University of Texas in Austin, Le Fresnoy Art & Media Institute in France, University of Oregon, Bela Tarr’s Film Fabrica in Sarajevo, DFFB in Berlin, and currently at the California Arts Institute.