Andrea Gatopoulos

Today a new adventure starts. After @torinofilmlab , my feature film project "The Hallucinations" will be developed at the 49th La Residence of Cannes Film Festival @festivaldecannes @cinemadedemain ! It's crazy to be able to write it in the same place where some of my favorite directors were writing, like Lucrecia Martel, Wang Bing, Michel Franco and many others! Dear Liza, my dearest princess, you'll soon be alive and on the screen! Allons-y!

Felice di aprire le danze di questa 39. Settimana della Critica di Venezia @sicvenezia con il primo film co-creato con l’intelligenza artificiale (AGGRO DR1FT la utilizzava per generare VFX) a essere proiettato al festival di Venezia nella storia della manifestazione. Lavorare con l’intelligenza artificiale può essere una grandissima opportunità per ottenere il massimo della libertà creativa. Fin da bambino ho sempre sognato storie di fantasia e conservo ancora i piccoli libri che ho scritto durante le scuole elementari, quando non esistevano limiti se non quelli del gioco. Fare cinema in Italia mi ha disabituato all’immaginazione molto rapidamente e l’unica cosa che ne è successa a queste tante storie di fantascienza, che nessuno ha mai reputato fattibili, è stato prendere un sacco di polvere sugli scaffali. Oggi, invece, THE EGGREGORES’ THEORY vede la luce e il bambino che ero scoppia di felicità! Spero di potervi presentare questo film senza alcun pregiudizio, aprendo un dialogo sul futuro del cinema. (Continua nei commenti) THE EGGREGORES’ THEORY è una produzione @eliofilm , @ilvarco e @naffintusi , prodotto da @ariensd , @luigivincenzomascolo , @marcocrispano , @orazionaffintusi , @hatetheboy , sound post production by @fullcode @tommy.barbaro additional music by @labagnaragiorgio Ringrazio @zhenia.kazankina per l’aiuto in scrittura e montaggio e beafiorentino per aver aperto le porte a questo film. It’s Sci-Fi time!

I am more than happy to announce that my latest short film 𝘾𝙄𝙏𝙔 𝙊𝙁 𝙊𝙒𝙇𝙎 will have its world premiere at the 79th Cannes Film Festival @festivaldecannes , in the short film competition of @semaine_de_la_critique ! Dreams do come true! 🪄💫 𝘾𝙄𝙏𝙔 𝙊𝙁 𝙊𝙒𝙇𝙎, supported by CNC @le_cnc and Procirep Angoa @prixduproducteurtv , is a French-German-Italian co-production between Moderato @moderatofilms , *Eversince GmbH @eversince.gmbh , Il Varco Cinema @ilvarco , 8Production @pr8duction , Cattive Produzioni @cattiveproduzioni , Oudeis @oudeispictures , and C41 @c41prod . An exclusive for Italy with Rai Cinema Channel @rai_cinema . We’ve been working on this film for the past two years, and it wouldn’t have been possible without the collaboration and dedication of this amazing team! This short film tells the story of Vera, who, on the last evening before her departure, is putting her little sister to bed. To hide the real reason for her leaving, she tells her a bedtime fairy tale about a city swallowed by an eternal night.🌛🌃 A huge thank you to @festivaldecannes , @semaine_de_la_critique and the entire selection committee for welcoming our film! 𝘥𝘪𝘳𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘣𝘺 Zhenia Kazankina @zhenia.kazankina 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘥𝘶𝘤𝘦𝘥 𝘣𝘺 Clémence Crépin Neel @clemence.crpnnl · Igor Courtecuisse · Pavel Karykhalin @ceccil.b · Sergei Yahontov @yahontovs · Lev Maslov · Andrea Gatopoulos @andreagatopoulos · Marco Crispano @marcocrispano · Laura Catalano @lauracatalano7 · Silvio Giannini @_silviogiannini_ · Marco Mingolla @marcomingolla · Domenico Panarello @domenicopanarello90 · Stefano Schiavone @oudeis_stefano · Leone Balduzzi @leonedirector · Barbara Guieu @barbara_guieu 𝘍𝘶𝘭𝘭 𝘤𝘳𝘦𝘥𝘪𝘵𝘴 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘴 ↓

🎬 Meet the tutors of Nouvelle Bug Andrea Gatopoulos will be the Main Tutor for Nouvelle Bug Vol. 5! Andrea Gatopoulos is an Italian and Greek director, producer, and distributor. A member of EFA, Berlinale Talents, Locarno Spring Academy, and TFL, he studied in workshops with W. Herzog, Radu Jude, and A. Weerasethakul. His films deal with virtual realities, uncanny valleys, anti-capitalism, and critiques of progressivism. “Happy New Year, Jim” (2022) was the first machinima film at Cannes, at the 54th Quinzaine des Réalisateurs. In 2023, he presented “Eschaton Ad”, a film about the apocalyptic advent of AI, at Locarno. Later that year, he presented "A stranger quest” (2023), his first feature-length documentary about maps, at the Torino Film Festival. In 2024, his short film “The Eggregores’ Theory” opened the 39th Critics’ Week in Venice as the first AI film in Venice and was nominated for the EFA by ZINEBI and the 70th David di Donatello Awards, winning a special Nastro D’Argento for experimentation. 👾 Nouvelle Bug vol. 5 Revine Lago, 18 – 29 Aug 2026 Deadline: June 2nd, 2026 Apply now via the link in bio. 🔗

This is our poster for CITY OF OWLS by @zhenia.kazankina ! I rearranged to a vertical layout the marvellous embroidered blanket done by @nasekomoevdushe and designed by @smirnovasasha and @avoirbanane that you can see in the trailer, which was conceived as a tapestry illustrating the different characters of the story. It was adapted to the proportions of a film poster, cutting and pasting back the dozens of handmade figures on the canvas and then arranging the typography following hidden placement lines, mixing ancient handmade techniques with modern typography! 🪡⌨️ Back in 2022 my poster of "Happy New Year, Jim" made it in the "10 Best Posters of Cannes 2022" - will we make it again? Fingers crossed 🤞

I'm so happy to announce you that my wife's @zhenia.kazankina 's film "City of Owls", that I have co-written together with @bosonia , will have its world premiere at @semaine_de_la_critique at @festivaldecannes 2026! The film was produced by me with @ilvarco , along with French and German and Italian partners @moderatofilms , @eversince.gmbh , @pr8duction , @cattiveproduzioni , @oudeispictures and @c41 . It will be distributed by our @gargantua_distribution . It was made by an amazing female-led team (director, 2/3 screenwriters, cinematographer, editor, costume and set designers and line producer were all women). For us this is the coronation of three long years of work, but also of our marriage, a partnership not only in love, but also in creativity and work, that made my life so easy and full of joy! I love you Zhenia! I'm so happy so many people will get to testify your talent, your ideas and the kind magic of your cinema! See you in Cannes folks!! Aaand food for thought, because this is how cultures formed, and most of all, this is how Italian culture formed. We can praise our artistic and historical importance exactly because this was, and always has been, a land of peoples, of immigrants and travellers, of exchange and multilingualism. And it stopped being such land. The far right believes that a culture thrives when its ancient values are protected and enforced upon the population, making sure that the new is rejected and ejected out of the discourse. But that's wrong! A culture thrives when it's questioned, when it's in dialogue, when it meddles and mixes! Italian culture has always been this: a place of encounter and exchange! Let's start doing this again. Let's tune in with the rest of the world if we're really Italians, opening our eyes and ears, letting our language and values and aesthetics be questioned and letting them grow and evolve, keeping our strong core. More than ever Italy needs an identity to deal with this century! And here's two Italians in Cannes: an immigrant and her husband, the son of an immigrant!

I would love every filmmaker on earth to know that there is a lot of opportunities, both free and paid, to get your creativity out there and be seen! So I created this Telegram group, my OnlyFUNDS (pun intended), where I post hot workshops and residencies and funds and other calls for development and so on. I stared this project a few months ago and many people are part of it already, but we can be more! I think that the only way for cinema to be independent in the future is for filmmakers to multiply, and for this community to become tightly knit, and self-sufficient. I hope that seeing how many opportunities are out there will give a lot of filmmakers the hope and courage to continue believing that continuing to make films is possible, even in a world that is so uncertain and scary. The group is COMPLETELY FREE and will always be! The link is in my bio and everyone can join. (Yes, it’s only on Telegram!) See you there! 🏴‍☠️

UPDATE: The mods acknowledged the mistake and restored the film!! Thanks everyone for your support! THIS FILM SHALL NOT EXIST! I am very afraid to publish this, and to expose me even more to such attacks, so please, if you want to reply or say something, be loving and kind, and try not to hurt me or other people. Today I received news that moderator of TMDB (The Movie Database) whose API feeds Letterboxd, have decided to delete my film "The Eggregores' Theory" which apparently doesn't fit the definition of a movie because "it's AI generated". This means that likely, at the turn of the clock, the film and it's almost 2.000 ratings (an enormous amount for a short film, which was screened in more than 300 events and seen by almost a 300.000 people, opened Venice film festival, was acquired by MUBI and Rai and was nominated for an EFA) will disappear from one of the biggest cinema social media and will be erased. This is the last of a long list of insults and attacks that I have received in the last two years, always in a same cowardly guise - behind my back, on public platforms where I could not directly reply and before any kind of dialogue with me that could give me the chance to change their mind. I always shied away from answering, because I don't like confrontations. All the debate around AI - I think that as a director I should answer that with a film, and that's what I did. But this last event made me understand that probably I gave something for granted. Do people really know how a film like this is made technically? I realized there is a lot of Anti-AI content made for the larger public, but very little explanation of how it is actually done. A lot of AI companies put a lot of emphasis on the "magic" of AI, making it look like you push a button and you have a film. Which is not the case. So please, join me in a small trip to know how much love went into the making of this movie. (My acting included). Any words of support are appreciated and if you want you can see the film in the link in bio. Viva il cinema.

🚨 Call for entries open! 🚨 @ilvarco and @lagofilmfest are proud to announce the fifth edition of the international avant-garde digital cinema residency Nouvelle Bug, that will take place in Revine Lago from August 18th to August 29th. Through ten days of workshops, 40 directors from all over the world will participate in seminars, theoretical and practical lessons on the cinema of tomorrow, delving into cutting-edge digital cinema techniques, from machinima to artificial intelligence to database cinema, writing, shooting and editing a short film. A toolkit to become completely independent, to be able to always make films. After working with 126 directors, making 120+ films from 30+ countries that have reached festivals worldwide including Berlinale, Visions Du Reel, ZINEBI, IDFA, DokLeipzig, Slamdance, HotDocs, Drama and many many others, we are ready to open our fifth call! At the end of the workshop, the best films will partecipate in an award ceremony with partner festivals who will program them in their next edition, and with distributors who are going to offer them a contract proposal. Application is open until June 2nd! Link in bio!

ONLINE RELEASE! I wanted to make a film about the compromised memories of a man living in a civilisation censored by a machine. Early AI proved to be the perfect poetic vehicle to represent this manumission, and how a person in such environment can cease to love. After a very long run started at @settimana_della_critica , and a tour in more than 300 festivals, exhibitions and screenings, the film nominated for an EFA by ZINEBI, was nominated by @premidavid and won a Silver Ribbon for Experimentation at @nastridargento . Thanks to Beau Farrell, Ina Pira and Meghan Oretsky, THE EGGREGORES' THEORY is available from today for streaming for free worldwide at @vimeostaffpicks , except for Italy (playing on @mubiitalia until November, then it will be available for free on Rai Cinema Channel) and China (playing on Toujiang platform). Link in bio!

Really humbled to be supported by @fondazioneprada for my debut feature "The Hallucinations". I'm among filmmakers that I cherish and love - one of my masters - Api, Laura Citarella, Velena Paravel, Palmason, Eduardo Williams... And then there's me! I feel tiny, but full of gratitude, and really eager to show you this film of mine... Soon! "In 1728 Liza, a rebellious young heiress, lives at a Baroque court, while a mysterious buzzing brings her sounds and visions of a distant future. When her father, the king, loses his voice and his authority falters, her hallucinations transform the palace into a museum of the future. Amidst political conspiracies and perceptual discrepancies, Liza attempts to intervene in the course of history, poised between delirium and premonition." Last picture is me dreaming of baroque age. Thanks to Paolo Moretti, Rebecca De Pas, and all the committee and my producers @lesfilmsduworso @fandango_official @heretic.films @ilvarco

Come join me in Prague for Karlovy Vary's IFF @pragueshorts for a retrospective about my work! "He started out as an editor and cinematographer but eventually began working as a director, producer, distributor, and teacher. He is just 31 years old, but Andrea Gatopoulos is clearly one of the most active figures in the European film industry today. He studied modern literature in Rome and learned about film at workshops given by leading international directors such as Radu Jude, Werner Herzog, and Apichatpong Weerasethakul. His projects, which stand out for their unusual poetics and explore the mysterious and often gloomy corners of virtual reality, are frequently characterized by a sense of existential angst or a critique of progressivism. At the same time, they demonstrate new models of cinematic production – efficient, low-budget, and freed from traditional models of financing." We'll screen my films as a director and producer and on Friday, 27 February at 11:30am in Světozor’s Small Hall, I will hold a practical master class on alternative approaches and tools in the areas of film development, financing, production, and distribution. FILMS HAPPY NEW YEAR JIM (@quinzaine_des_cineastes 2022) ESCHATON AD (@filmfestlocarno Spring Academy 2023) THE EGGREGORES' THEORY (opening @settimana_della_critica 2024) LAS MEMORIAS PERDIDAS DE LOS ARBOLES di @antonio_la_camera (winner @settimana_della_critica 2023) HOMUNCULUS di @bonheur__supreme (winner @visionsdureel 2024) L'UOMO PIU' BELLO DEL MONDO di @paolobaiguera (@berlinale 2026) Link in bio for the program!