Athina Rachel Tsangari

Life and career

Tsangari was born in Athens, Greece. She studied literature at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, performance studies at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, and film directing at the University of Texas at Austin. Her first experience working in film was with a small role in Richard Linklater's 1991 film Slacker. In 1995, she founded and became the artistic director of the Cinematexas International Short Film Festival, which ran until 2006. She later served as the projection designer and video director on the creative team headed by Dimitris Papaioannou that designed the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens.

She designed the stage projections for the dance theatre work "2" by Dimitris Papaioannou in 2007. In 2008, she designed the video displays and projections for "A Greek Ceremony" - the Beijing Capital Museum Exhibit on the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2004 Summer Olympics. In 2009, she created "Reflections", a series of large-scale projections commissioned for the opening of the new Acropolis Museum in Athens. In 2005, she founded Haos Film, a production and post-production studio based in Athens. Her producing credits include three films directed by Yorgos Lanthimos: Kinetta (2005), Dogtooth (2009), as an associate producer, and Alps (2011). She is a co-producer on Richard Linklater's Before Midnight (the third installment of the "Before Sunrise" series, shot in Messenia, Greece), where she also appeared in the role of Ariadni.

Her first feature, The Slow Business of Going (2000), premiered at the Thessaloniki International Film Festival in 2000 and won best film at the New York Underground Film Festival in 2002. The film was described by Domitila Bedel in Senses of Cinema as "a permanent erection for the eye". Her second feature as a director, Attenberg, premiered in the main competition at the 67th Venice International Film Festival in 2010, where it won the Coppa Volpi Award for Best Actress for its protagonist, Ariane Labed. The film was Greece's official entry for Best Foreign Language Film at the 84th Academy Awards. Tsangari's feature Duncharon was awarded the ARTE France Cinéma Award for best project at the International Film Festival Rotterdam CineMart 2012. Her film The Capsule (2012), commissioned by the Deste Foundation for Contemporary Art, premiered at the 2012 Locarno, 2012 Toronto and 2013 Sundance film festivals to critical acclaim. In 2013, she created a fundraising film for the Benaki Museum, the pioneering museum of Greek heritage, narrated by Willem Dafoe.

In March 2014 she finished shooting her third feature film Chevalier (2015) — a buddy comedy set on a yacht in the Aegean Sea — premiered at the Locarno Film Festival. It won the Best Film prize in official competition at the BFI-London Film Festival 2015. It also received a Best Actor prize for its all-male ensemble cast, and a Jury Special Mention for directing, from the Sarajevo IFF. It had its North American premiere at the Toronto IFF, followed by the New York Film Festival to critical acclaim.

She served as a creative advisor at the Sundance Feature Film Program Directing Lab and at the Sundance Istanbul and Jordan screenwriter labs. In 2013, she was a member of the jury at the 63rd Berlin International Film Festival. In 2017 she was on the World Dramatic Jury at the Sundance Film Festival and on the Cinéfondation and Short Films Jury at the Cannes Film Festival.

Feature films

Director

Screenwriter

Producer

Actor

Shorts

Projection design