Murderess (Fonissa)
Fiction / 97’ / 2023
Synopsis: On a remote island in Greece, circa 1900, Hadoula, trapped in her own mother’s rejection, struggles to survive following the dictates of a patriarchal society. Mentally humiliated, amidst the discrediting of her very status as a woman, she wants to be freed not only from her persecutors, but also from her own fate, that of a person who has lost her way. Based on the classic masterpiece by Alexandros Papadiamantis, Murderess’ story revolves around the dominant mother-daughter dipole and the dominant pattern of women’s relationships with each other that initially influence the microcosm of the family and then that of provincial society.
Eva Nathena
Born in Crete, Eva studied at the Athens School of Fine Arts. She worked as an assistant to set designer Dionysis Fotopoulos and then she went on to collaborate with stage and film directors such as Costa Gavras and Pantelis Voulgaris. She was awarded the Greek State Prize for Costume Design three times. Murderess, her feature debut, was a phenomenal success in Greece and is still doing the festival circles all around the world. The film won six awards at last year’s Thessaloniki International Film Festival and five Hellenic Academy Awards out of 16 nominations last June.
A London based anthropologist and filmmaker, she has a BA and a MA in Film and Theatre Studies, as well as a MA in Ethnographic Studies and a PhD in Visual Anthropology. She is currently teaching Anthropology of Art, Gender Theory and Visual Anthropology at Goldsmiths, University of London. Claudia has conducted long-term ethnographic fieldwork in Mexico, researching the impact of globalization processes on the indigenous population, as well as the role of theatre as an empowering tool for disadvantaged communities. She has produced several art and ethnographic documentaries across different countries, including Mexico, France, Hungary, India, Germany, UK, Greece and Costa Rica.