Athina Rachel Tsangari

Directing

Athina Rachel Tsangari

Born 1966-04-02 · Athens, Kingdom of Greece [now Greece]

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.

Acting credits

Before Midnight poster
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

Slacker poster
6.7

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

University, Inc. poster
8.0

The closing of a student film program serves as a paradigm for interrogating the corporate ideology that guides the largest public university in the USA: the University of Texas at Austin.

University, Inc.

1999

After Before poster
7.0

A documentary that takes a look at the production of BEFORE MIDNIGHT. As the film starts, Richard Linklater, Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke are sitting around as filming has just completed. From here we get some terrific stories as they talk about the characters as well as what they bring and take from them. We also get footage from the filming of the movie where we get to see how the actors and director work together to try and build up the scenes.

After Before

2017

No artwork available
NR

Athina Rachel Tsangari has become one of the foremost figures of the so-called “Greek Weird Wave”—a movement characterized by its fascination with human behavior, bitingly absurdist humor, and arresting visual style—both as a director and as a producer for contemporaries such as Yorgos Lanthimos. Her films, however, showcase a bold vision that goes way beyond the merely “weird,” offering a provocative perspective on family, sexuality, power dynamics, and the inherent strangeness of human interaction. In this original documentary, David Thompson travels to the Greek island of Hydra to meet up with Tsangari and discuss her directorial philosophy and what it means to “live cinema.”

Athina Rachel Tsangari: Cinema on the Edges

2016

Behind the camera

Venice 70: Future Reloaded poster
5.0

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

Venice 70: Future Reloaded poster
5.0

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

Venice 70: Future Reloaded poster
5.0

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

Harvest poster
6.0

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

Harvest

2025

Harvest poster
6.0

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

Harvest

2025

Harvest poster
6.0

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

Harvest

2025

Alps poster
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

30/30 Vision: Three Decades of Strand Releasing poster
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

Preparation poster
NR

Three generations of women in one household do what they can to prepare for the impending loss of one of their number.

Preparation

2017

Attenberg poster
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

Attenberg poster
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

Attenberg poster
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

Dimitris Papaioannou 2 poster
6.7

Dimitris Papaioannou's new piece is a "dissection of the male psyche," and seems to draw upon a range of influences including the work of Jean Genet, Rene Magritte and Robert Wilson. Inspiration for the show also came partly from Papaioannou's own experiences as a gay man in Greece.

Dimitris Papaioannou 2

2007

Dimitris Papaioannou 2 poster
6.7

Dimitris Papaioannou's new piece is a "dissection of the male psyche," and seems to draw upon a range of influences including the work of Jean Genet, Rene Magritte and Robert Wilson. Inspiration for the show also came partly from Papaioannou's own experiences as a gay man in Greece.

Dimitris Papaioannou 2

2007

Kinetta poster
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

Chevalier poster
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

Chevalier poster
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

After Before poster
7.0

A documentary that takes a look at the production of BEFORE MIDNIGHT. As the film starts, Richard Linklater, Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke are sitting around as filming has just completed. From here we get some terrific stories as they talk about the characters as well as what they bring and take from them. We also get footage from the filming of the movie where we get to see how the actors and director work together to try and build up the scenes.

After Before

2017

After Before poster
7.0

A documentary that takes a look at the production of BEFORE MIDNIGHT. As the film starts, Richard Linklater, Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke are sitting around as filming has just completed. From here we get some terrific stories as they talk about the characters as well as what they bring and take from them. We also get footage from the filming of the movie where we get to see how the actors and director work together to try and build up the scenes.

After Before

2017

Ladies in Waiting poster
NR

As the era of psychiatric asylums in Europe draws to an end, Ladies in Waiting opens a window to its past. Through the unique perspectives of caregivers from the Psychiatric Hospital of Attica - the last remaining one in Greece - and the lives of care-receivers, we take a peek inside the taboo world of mental illness.

Ladies in Waiting

2023

Digger poster
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 First Image poster
NR

Athens, April of 1967. During the first days of the military dictatorship, Loukas is suffocating in his family's apartment, which he is not allowed to leave. He then invents a new game that connects him to the outside world: answering the telephone. But the house's phone line gets mixed up with that of the Studio cinema...

The First Image

2025

The Capsule poster
4.9

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

The Capsule

2012

The Capsule poster
4.9

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

The Capsule

2012