John the Violent

The screening on Thursday 22 October will be introduced by Film Lecturer Tonia Kazakopoulou.

Synopsis:

It’s midnight on a deserted street in Athens. A young woman is stabbed to death by a stranger, who instantly slips into the shadows. Uppon his arrest, alleged perpetrator John Zachos immediately confesses to the murder but during the trial it becomes apparent that his testimony is an impression of what he has read in the press and is full of inconsistencies. The search for the truth is interrupted and the battle between society and individual rages on.

Curator’s note:

A monumental debut only now finding its rightful place in world cinema, Tonia Marketaki’s film was based on real life events that caused great controversy and mesmerised audiences at the Thessaloniki Film Festival. This labyrinthine portrait of a self-confessed murderer – shaped by toxic masculinity – is both formally and conceptually innovative. Marketaki does not focus on the crime, but uses it as a springboard for a feminist exploration light years ahead of its time, one that would have been radical anywhere in the world.

John the Violent is a definitive study of ethics, and a strikingly prophetic one about how press and media narratives actively distort and shape reality.

Dr Tonia Kazakopoulou is a Lecturer in Film & Television at the University of Reading. Her research interests include women’s cinema of small nations, and particularly of Greece; contemporary European and world cinemas; the politics of representation in film and television. She has been the curator of the international standing conference Contemporary Greek Film Cultures, and she has also published on women’s cinema, on Greek women screenwriters, on contemporary Greek cinema and motherhood, as well as on the female characters in Yorgos Lanthimos’ films. Tonia’s edited volume Women and Violence in Greek Cinema is forthcoming from Edinburgh University Press (2027).

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Part of Greek Salad Tonia Marketaki, Greece, 1973, 180m.