Theatre and Performance scholar wins international awards for experimental new film

A drama scholar has won a pair of European awards for his directorial work on his debut film.

Professor Konstantinos Thomaidis picked up the Best Director Award at the Berlin Indie Shorts Festival last month, for his short documentary, Mother Company, which he co-helmed with Alexander Raptotasios.

This was followed by further honours at the Berlin Indie Film Festival, where Professor Thomaidis, of the Department of Communications, Drama and Film, received Best First Time Director for a Short Documentary, while the film was awarded Best Editing.

Filmed across 2023-24, Mother Company is a commentary on the environmental, health and social impact of the lignite extraction industry on local communities in Northern Greece. Blending choral music and verbatim performance, the film follows a children’s choir in an abandoned power plant, role-playing as generations of workers of this de-industrialised area.

“Winning these awards has definitely come as a surprise,” says Professor Thomaidis, who is Associate Professor in Voice, Theatre & Performance, and Director of the University’s MA Theatre Practice. “This is my first film, and I’ve never thought of myself as a film-maker in such terms. But the most important aspect to this was having the community and our creative teams recognised, because directing is such a collaborative endeavour.”

The two directors recorded 26 interviews with current and former workers, as well as several members of a local cancer association. But rather than use the footage of the interviews in the film, Professor Thomaidis proposed that they had the children recite the words verbatim.

“To me, it became evident during the initial stages of research that there are current and urgent issues in the area – including rapid depopulation – that are principally impacting the young,” he said. “So, we collaborated with a local children’s choir and filmed inside a now-disused power plant and in workshop settings. Our intention was always to create a polyphonic film, allowing various local voices to be heard and not narrowing down complex issues to singular points of view.”

Mother Company will receive its UK premiere in the BAFTA-qualifying Aesthetica festival in York, followed by screenings at PÖFF Shorts – Black Nights Film Festival (Estonia), Art Speaks Out – Environmental Initiative (Germany/Brazil) and the LA International Art Film Fest (USA). It has also been confirmed for two festivals in Greece: the Athens International Digital Film Festival; and the Petit Plan: Europa.

Professor Thomaidis, who also wrote the choral music, said the film had broken new artistic ground for him, and he is now developing a script for his second film. He is also in pre-production discussions for a large-scale theatre production, adding to his remarkable roll call of 45 shows in the past 20 years.

“I am primarily a theatre artist and researcher, so directing my first film was quite a step into the unknown,” he adds. “I was lucky, however, to take this step with Alexander, a long-standing collaborator in the theatre, and to be truly welcomed by the local community, who were exceptional in their support of the film.

“Our creative decisions came with incredible challenges, such as ensuring health and safety for filming inside a power plant. But in many ways, the film also extended and reimagined in a cinematic language some of the core preoccupations I have always had when working in the theatre, such as involving communities, or creating dramaturgies primarily reliant on music, sound and song.”