Following its New York City premiere last November, ‘Olympia’; a raw, unfiltered and funny documentary on Olympia Dukakis, is coming to Cyprus on August 3.
Directed by Cypriot filmmaker, Harry Mavromichalis, ‘Olympia’ is set to screen at the Limassol International Documentary Festival amongst 20 award-winning documentaries from around the world.
The Hollywood Reporter calls it an “uncommonly personal, cinema verité-style portrait of its fascinating, iconoclastic subject…”. CBS News says it’s “A thoroughly captivating film, befitting its arresting star.” Jezebel declares “Olympia Dukakis finally gets the biographical documentary she deserves.”
This star-studded documentary includes:
Whoopi Goldberg (The View), Laura Linney (Ozark), Diane Ladd (Chinatown)
Lynn Cohen (Hunger Games) , Lainie Kazan (My Big Fat Greek Wedding)
Austin Pendleton (A Beautiful Mind), Ed Asner (Up), Armistead Maupin (author of Tales of the City), Michael Dukakis (Governor of MA)
Mavromichalis follows Academy Award® winning actress Olympia Dukakis as she takes on the roles of actor, teacher, wife, mother, and social activist.
Starting on the day she turns 80 and continuing for three years, this film deals with the struggles and pains surrounding identity and the roles placed on us by society.
Its cinema-verité style allows the audience to constantly move alongside Olympia as she navigates between rehearsals, workshops, family life, and finally the journey with her daughter and granddaughters to her ancestral home in Greece.
Exhibiting both candour and vulnerability, we see her deal with age, grief and sexuality while opening up about her past struggles with depression, suicide and drug addiction.
We are granted the raw, unfiltered attitude of Olympia without a script to guide her. Her fierceness is seen to persist throughout her daily life beyond the stage or film. Years of oppression, subordination and self-doubt have thickened her skin and sharpened her mind, and her energy is contagious.
Despite her age and the innumerable experiences in her life, her determination to continue, to move forward and overcome the hurdles that life places before us all, is an inspiration. Through her brutal honesty and sincerity, Olympia compels us to confront our own shortcomings and differences by letting go, and moving forward with defiant conviction, which leaves us with a cathartic feeling that we too can become an “octogenarian motherfucker.”
Mavromichalis worked with two “musical geniuses” as he called the composers who wrote the music for the film. Paul Cantelon has composed music for “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”, “The Other Boleyn Girl”, “W”, “Jane Fonda in Five Acts” and many more.
Alexia Vassiliou composed part of the music for the film and she also composed and performed the theme song called “Time”.
Harry Mavromichalis (director), Alexia Vassiliou (composer & singer), Anthoula Katsimatides (executive producer) will be at the screening.
About Olympia Dukakis:
Born June 20, 1931 in Lowell, Massachusetts. The daughter of Greek immigrants, Dukakis earned two degrees from Boston University and worked as a physical therapist while pursuing a stage career.
Notable films include Steel Magnolias, Look Who’s Talking, Away From Her, Mr. Holland’s Opus and Mighty Aphrodite.
Known for her deadpan humour and motherly charm, Dukakis won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her performance as Cher’s mother, Rose Castorini in Moonstruck in 1987. She was also nominated for an Emmy for her performance as Anna Madrigal in the public television miniseries Tales of the City.
Her bestselling autobiography Ask Me Again Tomorrow: A Life in Progress was published in 2003.
In June 2019, she reunited with Laura Linney, Victor Garber, and Ellen Page for the Netflix Original series “Tales of the City”, the last book by Armistead Maupin.
About Harry Mavromichalis:
Harry Mavromichalis received his MFA (Masters in Fine Arts) in Film Directing from New York University. He writes, directs and produces both fiction and non-fiction. He is currently in post-production for his second feature-length documentary. An endearing and funny portrait of one couple’s love and dysfunction, “Yankee Restraint” examines the intricacies of a relationship spanning decades and tackles issues of codependency, resentment and devotion. He is also producing a documentary on the all-women punk rock group from the late 1980’s “The Lunachicks”. He is currently writing his first feature length narrative with established Italian writer/actor (Hannibal) Rinaldo Rocco. Harry curated the first LGBTQ Film Festival of Cyprus, founded the Cyprus International Children’s Theatre Festival, and was one of the key organisers of the 1st Pride Parade in Cyprus.
CREDITS:
Director: Harry Mavromichalis
Writers: Harry Mavromichalis, Sam Eggers
Producers: Muriel Moraes, Keren Seol, Andrew Ford, Harry Mavromichalis
Co-Producer: Lynn Webb
Associate Producer: Pamela Spyrs
Executive Producers: Sid Ganis (The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, Indiana Jones, Top Gun, Fatal Attraction, Deuce Bigalow), Anthoula Katsimatides (Jessica Jones, Taking Woodstock)
Editors: Sam Eggers, Andrew Ford
Music by: Paul Cantelon (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Jane Fonda in 5 Acts, The Other Boleyn Girl)
Additional Music & Theme Song by: Alexia Vassiliou
Cinematographers: John Ryan Johnson, Federico Cesca (Tales of the City).
www.olympiathefilm.com ; Facebook, Instagram, Twitter: @olympiathefilm
The documentary will be screened at Ceronia Hall – Lanitis Carob Mill at 8.30 pm on Saturday, August 3.
