LOS ANGELES – The Los Angeles Greek Film Festival (LAGFF) announced that it will be going hybrid in 2022 and will present the documentary film Y1: Silence of the Deep streaming online October 27-31, in celebration of the bicentennial of the start of the Greek Revolution.

LAGFF partners with the Basil P. Caloyeras Center for Modern Greek Studies at Loyola Marymount University under the auspices of the Consulate General of Greece in Los Angeles, to screen the documentary Y1: Silence of the Deep (2020), directed by Philippos Vardakas and produced by Stelios Efstathopoulos. The film looks at the riveting story of the legendary submarine Y1 Katsonis that was sunk during World War II by the Germans north of the island of Skiathos on September 14, 1943.

Seventy-five years later, with the support of the Hellenic Navy, the filmmakers searched and located the submarine at 253m depth. Alongside the challenges locating Y1 Katsonis, the personal stories of these WWII heroes come to life with material from unpublished documents, crewmembers’ diaries, and narratives, as well as family members’ testimonies.

The film will stream online October 27-31 and will be followed by a live Zoom discussion with the cinematographer and producer Stelios Efstathopoulos, and the journalist Bilio Tsoukala, the daughter of Y1’s Commanding Officer Elias Tsoukalas on Saturday, October 30 at 11 AM PST, 9 PM Greece.

Additionally, the documentary “By the Light of Thine Eyes” 200 Years of Greece (“Σε γνωρίζω από την όψη” 200 ΧΡΟΝΙΑ ΕΛΛΑΔΑ), produced by the Greece 2021 Committee, will also be available. The film imaginatively narrates the two centuries of modern Greece, based on archival material and evidence and approaches the subject by highlighting not only instances from our military and political history but also facts from the fields of science, the arts, and everyday life.

Pre-order your free tickets online: https://lagff200years.eventive.org/welcome.

To attend the Zoom discussion with the Y1 filmmakers, on Saturday, October 30, 11 AM PST, 9 PM Greece, RSVP online: shorturl.at/yIJL6.

This coming May, LAGFF will be returning to the theaters for select screenings and other events, while developing their digital platform and offering more screenings and events beyond borders. New films (completion within the last two years) will compete for the Orpheus Awards for best feature, direction (features), performance, documentary, short film, and animation.

Early bird submission deadline is January 10, 2022, and the regular submission deadline is February 28, 2022.

More information about submitting a film is available online: https://www.lagff.org/submit-your-film/.

LAGFF also announced that its International Project Discovery Forum Director Araceli Lemos received an honorable mention at the Locarno International Film Festival for her feature debut Holy Emy, a magical realism film that explores the relationship of two Filipino sisters in the modern-day Greek port of Piraeus. The film is set to have its North American premiere at AFI Fest’s World Cinema section on November 14.

LAGFF Programmer Mando Stathi produced the short film Brutalia, exploring systems of power in human society. It received multiple awards including the Canal+ at the Cannes Film Festival and the Golden Dionysus at the Drama International Short Film Festival.

More information about LAGFF is available online: https://www.lagff.org/.