Event: Greece - Athens

Athens International Film Festival

When:	Sep 2008 (annual)
Where:	Attikon Cinema
Costs:	Individual screenings €6 Festival pass €30-€75

The Athens International Film Festival - also known as the Opening Nights Festival - is a non-competitive international festival with an emphasis on lower-budget independent productions and American indie cinema. The Audience Award provides advertising funding for a Greek distributor.

Founded in the mid-1990s, the festival's previous award-winners include John Duigan' s Lawn Dogs, Roberto Benigni' s Life is Beautiful and Julio Medem's Lovers of the Arctic Circle. Regular programmes feature world cinema, American independents, avant premières, documentaries, shorts, retrospectives, films by Greek expatriates, retrospectives and an annual country focus. The festival has recently added a section dealing with "films whose style or content is provocative, innovative, experimental."

The festival website releases full details of this year's programme as soon as they are available.