Michel Dimopoulos Dies: Former Thessaloniki Film Festival Director Was 74

Zac Ntim
·1 min read
  • Oops!
    Something went wrong.
    Please try again later.
  • Oops!
    Something went wrong.
    Please try again later.

Michel Dimopoulos, former director of the Thessaloniki International Film Festival, has died. He was 74.

Dimopoulos served as Thessaloniki’s artistic director from 1991 to 2005. In a statement published Thursday afternoon, the festival said Dimopoulos brought a “fresh breath of originality” to Thessaloniki during his tenure and “expanded the institution’s international horizons.”

More from Deadline

“Michel had always been on the side of the Festival and its people. He was an ardent film lover and a passionate supporter of independent European cinema,” the statement read.

“He will live on in Olympion’s corridors, in the Port, inside the movie theaters, tireless and with a smile on his face, soulfully speaking for the films he loved, expanding our horizons and introducing us to the pioneering and restless cinema of the new era.”

Dimopoulos was born in 1949 in Paris. He studied cinema in France and began his career as a film critic in Avgi, a daily left-wing newspaper published in Athens, Greece.

He served as a member of the Caméra d’Or jury at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival. That year the award was handed to Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi for The White Balloon. He was on the Un Certain Regard jury at Cannes in 2004 when the top prize went to the Romanian filmmaker Cristi Puiu for The Death of Mr. Lazarescu.

Dimopoulos also had cameo roles in several Greeek films such as Athina Rachel Tsangari’s Attenberg.

“Our warmest condolences to his family and his beloved ones,” the festival’s statement ended.

Best of Deadline

Sign up for Deadline's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Click here to read the full article.