The Film Society of Lincoln Center and Jaeger-LeCoultre announced the selection of writer and director Athina Rachel Tsangari (Attenberg, 2011 New Directors/New Films) as their 2015 Filmmaker in Residence, the third annual initiative and partnership between the two organizations. Previous participants include award-winning directors Lisandro Alonso (Jauja) and Andrea Arnold (Red Road).
Lesli Klainberg, Executive Director of the Film Society of Lincoln Center said: “We are very excited to welcome Athina Tsangari as the third annual Filmmaker in Residence during the 53rd New York Film Festival. Athina is a dynamic and fearless filmmaker, and we are thrilled to provide her with the space and time to develop new work while connecting her with a vibrant New York film community. Athina has already had a remarkable career, and we are so excited to see what she does next.”
“I feel greatly honored to be hosted as the Film Society of Lincoln Center and Jaeger-LeCoultre’s Filmmaker in Residence this year,” said Tsangari. “I am looking forward to working on my new script, part of which is set in New York City, and to drawing inspiration from the city itself, camaraderie from its essential film community, and stimulation from the Film Society’s invigorating programming. It is always an invaluable gift when Xenia—the goddess of hospitality—and cinema join their graces and forces.”
During her residency in New York, Tsangari will be working on a screwball action-thriller called White Knuckles that centers on two criminal sisters (a burglar and a bookkeeper) dealing with “VAT fraud, amour fou, architectural infiltration, and electrically amplified fistfighting.” Her newest feature, Chevalier, is a buddy comedy that takes place on a luxury yacht astray on the Aegean Sea and will have its world premiere in August at the Locarno l Film Festival.
Athina Rachel Tsangari holds a BA in Comparative Literature, Philosophy, and Drama from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece. After graduation, she moved to Austin to study film directing. Her introduction to cinema came by a happy accident, with a small role in Richard Linklater’s seminal 1991 film Slacker, and her relationship with Linklater continued when she served as co-producer on Before Midnight (2013), in which she also appeared as Ariadni. Her first short, Fit, was a finalist at the Student Academy Awards. Her MFA thesis feature at the University of Texas at Austin, The Slow Business of Going (2001), a lo-fi sci-fi road movie starring Lizzie Martinez, was shot with a skeleton crew in hotel rooms in nine cities around the world. The 2002 Village Voice Critics’ Poll listed it as one of the year’s “best first films,” and it also garnered several directing awards and now belongs in MoMA’s permanent film collection.
Her sophomore feature, Attenberg (2010), premiered in the main competition of the Venice Film Festival, where its lead Ariane Labed won the Coppa Volpi Award for Best Actress, and then went on to win several best film/directing awards at festivals worldwide. It was Greece’s Best Foreign Language Film submission for the 2012 Academy Awards, and a runner-up for the LUX Prize for Best European film. The Capsule(2012), made in collaboration with Polish artist Aleksandra Waliszewska and commissioned by the Deste Foundation for Contemporary Art as both a film and an installation, premiered at dOCUMENTA (13) in Kassel, followed by the Locarno, Toronto, and Sundance film festivals to critical acclaim. The script for her sci-fi “screwball tragedy” Duncharon (co-written with her longtime collaborator and Haos Film partner Matt Johnson) was awarded the "ARTE France Cinéma" Award for best European project in development, at Rotterdam IFF’s CineMart in 2012.
The Filmmaker in Residence program was launched in 2013 by Jaeger-LeCoultre and the Film Society of Lincoln Center as an annual initiative designed to support filmmakers at an early stage in the creative process against the backdrop of New York City and the New York Film Festival (NYFF).
The 2013 Filmmaker in Residence, Andrea Arnold (Wuthering Heights, Fish Tank), utilized her residency to develop the script and work on pre-production for first feature project shot in the United States,American Honey starring Shia LaBeouf, which was introduced to buyers at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival.
The 2014 Filmmaker in Residence, Lisandro Alonso (Jauja, Liverpool, Fantasma, Los Muertos) is working on development for an untitled project that began during his residency at FSLC and is currently meeting with producers in South America, aiming to shoot soon in the United States.
***The Film Society receives generous, year-round support from American Airlines, The New York Times, HBO, Stella Artois, The Kobal Collection, Variety, Trump International Hotel and Tower, RowNYC, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York State Council on the Arts.
***Support for the New York Film Festival is also generously provided by Jaeger-LeCoultre, Fiji Water, and WNET New York Public Media.
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