A Tribute to Costa-Gavras and Michèle Ray-Gavras

ABOUT THE SERIES:

The American Cinematheque, in collaboration with Los Angeles Greek Film Festival, is honored to pay tribute to the legendary Greek-French filmmaker Costa-Gavras and his producing partner in both cinema and life, Michèle Ray-Gavras, beginning during our fourth annual ‘Bleak Week: Cinema of Despair’ and continuing afterward.

Costa-Gavras’ work is often politically indicting, seeking to reveal social truths through an atmospheric visual style that interrogates the line between reality and artifice. His films present dark and radical themes under the guise of commercial filmmaking conventions, thrilling audiences in route to their devastating realizations.

Our tribute kicks off with Costa-Gavras’ Palme d’Or–winning masterpiece MISSING, which also earned the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. The film delicately presents the controversial discourse surrounding the clashes between individuals, ideologies and the political realities that dictate the eventualities of global bureaucracies, hinting at some of the events which triggered widespread political disillusionment in the 1970s. Following Costa-Gavras’ internationally acclaimed Z, which became the first film to ever be nominated for an Academy Award for both Best Picture and Best Foreign Language Film, he released the equally impressive, THE CONFESSION. Self-proclaimed as a cinematic plea against totalitarianism, and more specifically against Stalinism – as it is based on a true story set within the context of that period in Italian history – the film had significant real-world impact upon its release, leading to reimagined ideologies amongst French intellectuals and others across Europe.

Screening outside of ‘Bleak Week,’ HANNA K. is Costa-Gavras’ interrogation of the layered dynamics surrounding the Palestinian cause and the political contexts which inhibit the triumph of justice for those suffering under a political system designed to work against them. The film was praised by Palestinian thinker and literary critic Edward Said for its uncompromised depiction of their particular human history and considered by him to be vital for its humanizing representation of the Palestinian identity in film and media.