The Cinematheque

A poor English teacher, hired by a wealthy family to tutor their daughter, comes face to face with the family’s values as he navigates the romantic overtures of both the daughter and her mother. Filled with observational documentary flourishes, Face to Face satirizes the new haute bourgeoisie of postwar industrialized and urbanized Athens. Cinephiles will appreciate the film’s transposition of the styles, tropes, and temperaments of the French New Wave of early François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard, as well as traces of Left Bank filmmaker Alain Resnais’s modernist masterpiece Muriel. Manthoulis directed fiction but primarily documentary films, and worked for both Greek and French television. This digital restoration of Face to Face was carried out from the original 35mm negatives, preserved at the Greek Film Archive vaults.

In Greek, German, and English with English subtitles

Best Director
Thessaloniki Film Festival 1966