Summary
- Jacqueline Lentzou won the Orizzonti Award for Best Director at the 83rd Venice Film Festival
- The award was given for A Day in the Life of Jo: Chapter Phaedra
- The film draws inspiration from the killing of Alexis Grigoropoulos
- The main cast includes Evita Andriopoulou, Eleni Vergeti and Anastasia Gouliamou
- The Greek-language film runs for 88 minutes and is a Greece-Germany-France co-production
- It also received the Edipo Re Inclusion and Sustainability Award
Jacqueline Lentzou won the Orizzonti Award for Best Director at the 83rd Venice Film Festival for A Day in the Life of Jo: Chapter Phaedra, a film inspired by the killing of Alexis Grigoropoulos.
The Greek filmmaker received one of the major distinctions of the Orizzonti competition with her second feature film, which had its world premiere in Venice. The film is in Greek, runs for 88 minutes and is a co-production between Greece, Germany and France.
The award carries particular significance for Greek cinema, recognising the directorial vision of a filmmaker with an established international presence in a story that brings together adolescence, memory, loss and sudden death with one of the events that marked contemporary Greece.
The Orizzonti Best Director Award
Orizzonti is one of the Venice Film Festival’s main competitive sections and is dedicated to new cinematic trends and different forms of storytelling.
Jacqueline Lentzou won the Orizzonti Award for Best Director for A Day in the Life of Jo: Chapter Phaedra, completing her first feature-film appearance at Venice with one of the section’s major prizes.
The Orizzonti jury was chaired by French filmmaker and actress Valérie Donzelli, alongside Peter Becker, Elizabeth Lo, David Pablos and Barbara Ronchi.
While accepting the award, Lentzou spoke about the difficulties of independent filmmaking and the creative risk involved in the project, closing her speech with the words “Stop killing children.”
A story rooted in Alexis Grigoropoulos
The film’s starting point is the killing of 15-year-old Alexis Grigoropoulos by a police officer in Athens in 2008.
Jacqueline Lentzou directly connects the project with that event. The death of a teenager so close to her own world and neighbourhood became the starting point for questions surrounding life, death, the body, the soul and absence.
The film does not attempt to reconstruct the killing of Alexis Grigoropoulos. Instead, it uses a fictional teenager to approach the trauma through personal experience, moving the story from reality into a more poetic and metaphysical space.
The final day of 15-year-old Jo
Jo is 15, melancholic and restless. Her day begins with small everyday tensions: she misses the school bus, argues with her mother and heads to school thinking about the choir auditions.
There, she hears Phaedra sing and is deeply moved by her voice. The two girls grow closer, share personal confessions and arrange to meet again that evening. Jo, however, will never make it to the meeting.
What begins as a delicate coming-of-age story gradually becomes an exploration of mortality, memory and what may remain after death.
The Greek cast and creative team
The main cast includes Evita Andriopoulou, Eleni Vergeti and Anastasia Gouliamou, with Ektoras Lygizos also appearing in the film.
Jacqueline Lentzou wrote the screenplay. Cinematography is by Grimm Vandekerckhove, while editing credits include Jacqueline Lentzou, Gabriel Gonzalez and Nikos Vavouris. The music is by Colin Stetson and sound by Dimitris Kanellopoulos.
The film was produced by companies in Greece, Germany and France, including Greek production companies Avion Films, Atalante Productions and Haris & Co.
A second feature with an international trajectory
A Day in the Life of Jo: Chapter Phaedra is Jacqueline Lentzou’s second feature after Moon, 66 Questions in 2021.
Lentzou had already established a strong presence at major international festivals through her short films, building a body of work frequently centred on family, alienation, loneliness and fragile human relationships.
In her new film, those elements meet a much more pronounced political and social background without turning the story into a reconstruction of real events.
Two awards in Venice
In addition to the Orizzonti Award for Best Director, the film also received the Edipo Re Inclusion and Sustainability Award.
The two distinctions have different roles, but together they reinforce the film’s presence at this year’s festival and give Lentzou’s second feature a particularly strong start to its international festival journey.
What we think
Jacqueline Lentzou’s distinction matters because it rewards a clearly personal directorial vision rather than simply the presence of a Greek production at a major festival. Connecting a real trauma from contemporary Greece with a poetic coming-of-age story is a demanding choice, and the Orizzonti Best Director Award shows that this approach managed to stand out in Venice.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which award did Jacqueline Lentzou win?
She won the Orizzonti Award for Best Director at the 83rd Venice Film Festival for A Day in the Life of Jo: Chapter Phaedra.
How is the film connected to Alexis Grigoropoulos?
The killing of 15-year-old Alexis Grigoropoulos by a police officer in Athens in 2008 was the main starting point for the story, although the film is not a reconstruction of the real case.
Who are the main actors?
The main cast includes Evita Andriopoulou, Eleni Vergeti and Anastasia Gouliamou, with Ektoras Lygizos also appearing.
How long is the film?
The film runs for 88 minutes and is in Greek.
Is this Jacqueline Lentzou’s first feature?
No. It is her second feature film after Moon, 66 Questions.
