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Athina Rachel Tsangari

Athina Rachel Tsangari

Directing

Biography

Athina Rachel Tsangari is a Greek filmmaker. Some of her most notable works include her feature films, The Slow Business of Going (2000), Attenberg (2010) and Chevalier (2015) as well as the co-production of Yorgos Lanthimos films Kinetta (2005), Dogtooth (2009), and Alps (2011). In her versatile work for cinema, she has also founded and been director of the Cinematexas International Short Film Festival. In 2014-2015, she was invited to Harvard University’s Visual and Environmental Studies department as a Visiting Lecturer on Art, Film, and Visual Studies. Tsangari was born in Athens, Greece. She holds a university degree from the Faculty of Philosophy of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, and two post-graduate diplomas: an MA in performance studies from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, and an MFA in Film Directing from the University of Texas at Austin. Her first experience working in film was with a small role in Richard Linklater's 1991 film Slacker. Since then, Tsangari has assumed multiple roles within the film industry.

Known For

Upload
7.8

In 2033, people who are near death can be “uploaded” into virtual reality hotels run by 6 tech firms. Cash-strapped Nora lives in Brooklyn and works customer service for the luxurious “Lakeview” digital afterlife. When L.A. party-boy/coder Nathan’s self-driving car crashes, his high-maintenance girlfriend uploads him permanently into Nora’s VR world.

Upload

2020
Dogtooth
7.0

Three teenagers are confined to an isolated country estate that could very well be on another planet. The trio spend their days listening to endless homemade tapes that teach them a whole new vocabulary. Any word that comes from beyond their family abode is instantly assigned a new meaning. Hence 'the sea' refers to a large armchair and 'zombies' are little yellow flowers. Having invented a brother whom they claim to have ostracized for his disobedience, the uber-controlling parents terrorize their offspring into submission.

Dogtooth

2009
Before Midnight
7.5

It has been nine years since we last met Jesse and Celine, the French-American couple who once met on a train in Vienna. They now live in Paris with twin daughters but have spent a summer in Greece at the invitation of an author colleague of Jesse's. When the vacation is over and Jesse must send his teenage son off to the States, he begins to question his life decisions, and his relationship with Celine is at risk.

Before Midnight

2013
Trigonometry
6.3

In crowded and expensive London, cash-strapped couple Gemma and Kieran open their small apartment to a third person. Somehow, their new addition, Ray, makes the flat seem bigger, not smaller. Gradually, many things become easier, nicer and better with an extra pair of hands.

Trigonometry

2020
Harvest
6.0

Over seven hallucinatory days, a village with no name, in an undefined time and place, disappears.

Harvest

2025
The Capsule
5.0

Seven girls, a mansion perched on a Cycladic rock, a cycle of lessons on discipline, desire and demise-infinitely.

The Capsule

2012
Venice 70: Future Reloaded
5.1

Made for the Venice Film Festival's 70th anniversary, seventy filmmakers made a short film between 60 and 90 seconds long on their interpretation of the future of cinema.

Venice 70: Future Reloaded

2013
Chevalier
5.6

In the middle of the Aegean Sea, six men on a fishing trip on a luxury yacht decide to play a game. During this game, things will be compared. Things will be measured. Songs will be butchered, and blood will be tested. Friends will become rivals and rivals will become hungry. But at the end of the journey, when the game is over, the man who wins will be the best man. And he will wear on his smallest finger the victory ring: the Chevalier.

Chevalier

2015
Slacker
6.8

Austin, Texas, is an Eden for the young and unambitious, from the enthusiastically eccentric to the dangerously apathetic. Here, the nobly lazy can eschew responsibility in favor of nursing their esoteric obsessions. The locals include a backseat philosopher who passionately expounds on his dream theories to a seemingly comatose cabbie, a young woman who tries to hawk Madonna's Pap test to anyone who will listen and a kindly old anarchist looking for recruits.

Slacker

1990
Attenberg
6.1

Marina, 23, is growing up with her architect father in a prototype factory town by the sea. Finding the human species strange and repellent, she keeps her distance...that is until a stranger comes to town and challenges her to a foosball duel, on her own table. Her father, meanwhile, ritualistically prepares for his exit from the 20th century, which he considers to be "overrated."

Attenberg

2010
September Says
7.1

Sisters September and July share an intense bond, speaking in a secret language and keeping the outside world at a distance. After September is suspended from school, their mother brings them to a remote house on the Irish coast—where July begins to resist her sister’s increasingly sadistic control.

September Says

2025
Fireflies
6.0

Ramin flees from persecution in Iran and ends up living in the limbo of exile, far from everything he knows, in the tropical port town of Veracruz, Mexico. There his nostalgia and melancholy are confronted with new friendships, while he starts to rediscover his own desires.

Fireflies

2018
Alps
6.2

A nurse, a paramedic, a gymnast and her coach offer a service for hire wherein they stand in for dead people by appointment, hired by relatives, friends or colleagues of the deceased, to assist with the grieving process.

Alps

2011
Kinetta
5.0

At a Greek hotel in the off-season, a chambermaid, a man obsessed with BMW cars, and a photo-store clerk attempt to film and photograph various badly re-enacted struggles between a man and a woman.

Kinetta

2005
30/30 Vision: Three Decades of Strand Releasing
5.3

Over 30 filmmakers and friends of Strand Releasing have come together to honor the company’s indelible contribution to independent cinema over the past thirty years. The participating filmmakers have each created a short film for the project, all shot on iPhones.

30/30 Vision: Three Decades of Strand Releasing

2019
Olla
6.5

After answering an ad on a dating website for Eastern European women, Olla leaves Ukraine and heads to French suburbia to move in with Pierre, who lives with his elderly mother. However, the suburbia cannot temper her desires, and nothing goes as expected.

Olla

2019
Lovers of Hate
4.7

Two rival brothers engage in the ultimate challenge when they compete for the affections of the same woman.

Lovers of Hate

2010
Digger
7.2

When Jonny visits his father Nikitas in his cabin in the woods after 20 years, the hermit ignores him. But to prevent the muddy ground from being pulled out from under their feet for reasons of profit, father and son must dig deep into it...

Digger

2021
The Invisible Hands
N/A

Maverick underground American/Lebanese musician and ethnomusicologist Alan Bishop (Sun City Girls and Sublime Frequencies), lands as a stranger in Cairo, soon after the 2011 uprisings, and teams up with three young Egyptian musicians for the translation of his old songs into Arabic. Under Bishop’s mentorship, this unlikely collaboration transforms into a band, The Invisible Hands.

The Invisible Hands

2017
The Benaki Museum
N/A

A promotional video directed by Athina Rachel Tsangari and narrated by Willem Dafoe about the history and the importance of the Museum Benaki.

The Benaki Museum

2013