Instructions for... campers! The Athens Open Air Film Festival popular horror marathon returns to Plato’s Academy Park
The time has come again: take your beach mats, cushions, and beach chairs, and join us in the blood freezing horror marathon that’s now become a tradition!
The 16th Athens Open Air Film Festival powered by DEI invites you tomorrow night, Saturday 11th of July, to set up camp in the (refreshingly) cool and atmospheric Plato’s Academy Park (137 Monastiriou Street) and stay up all night watching three horror movies—two of them famous, the third an undiscovered gem of the genre, shown for the first time in Greece on the silver screen. Entrance is free! The screenings are not recommended for anyone under 17 years of age.
As you can imagine, and as you know from the previous times, there won’t be any chairs at these screenings. You are free to settle down anywhere in the park you like, as long as you bring something to spread out and sit on. Besides that, we recommend that you bring some mosquito repellent just in case (we will be out in the park, after all) and arrive a little before dark, around 8:30, so you can find the spot you want on the grass and as close to the screen as you would like. Also, for those of you who arrive earlier than the scheduled starting time of the first film (which is at 9:30, once it’s fully dark), you will be accompanied by lively music and treated to savory snacks from Elite.
From there on, the evening will kick off with Martin Scorsese’s CAPE FEAR, in a 35th-anniversary screening since its theatrical release, featuring an unforgettably menacing Robert De Niro—who was nominated for an Oscar for this role—leading Nick Nolte, Jessica Lange, Juliette Lewis on a nightmarish journey through hell.
At 11:45 p.m., watch the first, classic, and best of them all, FRIDAY THE 13TH, in brand-new (and uncut) copy, the most famous slasher film of the ’80s—even if you’ve never seen it, you already know the plot from the countless movies that tried to imitate it: a group of young boys and girls plan a trip to a camp with a tragic past, where they are sadistically slaughtered by a masked killer. A very good reason to never go to camp.
The big highlight of the evening, however, awaits the late nighters at exactly 1:20 a.m. That’s when we will see, for the first time in our country, one of the most important and cult horror films of the ’70s, in a 50th-anniversary screening and in its complete, uncut version. So don’t miss under any circumstances Narciso Ibáñez Serrador’s ISLAND OF THE DAMNED, which comes to us from an era when films experimented with the audience’s tolerance and threw any hint of reassurance out the window.
HORROR MARATHON
Saturday 11 July, Plato's Academy Park.
Detailed Schedule
21h30 CAPE FEAR (1991, 129’) | Directed by: Martin Scorsese
23h45 FRIDAY THE 13TH (1980, 95’) | Directed by: Sean Cunningham
01h20 ISLAND OF THE DAMNED (1976, 112') | Directed by: Narciso Ibáñez Serrador
