I had filmed Giorgos Loukos for a whole year, between 2007 and 2008. It was the period when the miracle he presented as artistic director of the Athens Epidaurus Festival had just begun. We did not know each other before. I approached him and proposed the idea of a documentary whose filming would last for a long time, so that we could achieve something distinctive and profound. He immediately agreed.
I followed him constantly with a lightweight camera, on my own. I even reached his permanent place of residence, in Lyon. This eventually resulted in an episode for ERT's Paraskinio, which was broadcast with great success. From then on, we maintained a good and warm relationship with Giorgos Loukos.
A great deal happened in the years that followed. First came the economic crisis in Greece and, above all, his disgraceful dismissal at the end of 2015 by the SYRIZA government.
Giorgos Loukos went through an eight-year legal odyssey and was emphatically acquitted in 2023 of the fabricated financial charge that had been brought against him.
In the autumn of 2025, I proposed to the Festival's new artistic director, Michail Marmarinos, the making of a feature-length documentary that would encompass Giorgos Loukos's entire golden decade, as well as the events that led to his dismissal.
Using previously unseen material from the 2007-2008 filming that had not been used in the episode of Paraskinio, and featuring 45 speakers from Greece and abroad—artists, critics, theatre scholars and journalists—the film emerged and was screened in an atmosphere of extraordinary emotion, with Loukos himself present, on 13 June 2026.
In November 2026, the expanded version of the film follows, incorporating the tribute to Loukos of the first screening.
I therefore have the privilege of having made the only two documentaries that exist about Giorgos Loukos.
