Marina is a socially awkward young woman whose lack of interest in her fellow humans is as unyielding as her love for David Attenborough’s wildlife documentaries and the music of the American band Suicide. At 23 years old, she is sexually inexperienced and often listens to her friend Bella’s eccentric advice on the subject. Marina’s closest companion is her terminally ill father, Spyros, who is preparing his daughter for his eventual demise. In the midst of this, Marina stumbles into an unusual courtship with an engineer who is new to town. Against the backdrop of an industrial seaside town in Greece during the European debt crisis, writer-director Athina Rachel Tsangari depicts a generation dealing with personal and societal loss with deadpan humour and emotional veracity.

Athina Rachel Tsangari (b. 1966, Greece) made her directorial debut with The Slow Business of Going (2000). Her second film, Attenberg (2010), premiered at the Venice International Film Festival, where lead actress Ariane Labed was honoured with the Coppa Volpi Award for Best Actress. Tsangari’s next film, Chevalier (2015), is a satire on macho ideals. Branded by critics as part of the mid-2000s ‘Greek Weird Wave’, which rose in response to the Great Recession of 2007 to 2009, Tsangari also produced the works of fellow Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos, including Kinetta (2005), Dogtooth (2007), and Alps (2011). In turn, Lanthimos produced and acted in Attenberg.