By Christina Savopoulos
Greek community events often want to entice young people to attend and engage with Greek culture. This is no different for this year’s Melbourne and Sydney Greek Film Festivals (GFF).
Film as a vehicle for storytelling is a powerful medium, especially with the over consumption of short-form entertainment with the rise of TikTok and Instagram. The obvious increase in younger generations using these forms of storytelling has the film industry asking if it’s still relevant to younger audiences.
Jorge Menidis, Director of the Melbourne Greek Film Festival (MGFF) and Executive Assistant of the Greek Community of Melbourne (GCM), spoke to The Greek Herald about youth engagement (18–29 year olds) with the festival.
Celebrating its 30th year in 2025, the festival’s longevity is an exemplar of its popularity and presence in the Greek Australian film sphere. This year’s program celebrates favourite films from the past 30 festivals which left a lasting impression on viewers.
MGFF data shows the majority of festival attendees are aged between 29 and 55, with only 8% of attendees falling into the youth bracket of 18-29 year olds.
“It is a growing younger audience for us,” Jorge said, “but it’s still a segmented audience, the sector is still rather smaller than where we want it to be.”
Short form content is a limiting factor for youth engagement as it has surpassed film storytelling as the primary visual medium. A trip to the cinema no longer seems like a novelty when it’s so easy to turn on one of the many streaming services and hit play.
Jorge has noticed this shift and said the film industry is “desperately trying to find ways of bringing that audience into its cinema houses, besides superhero extraordinary films… The Greek film industry is far more bespoke than that.”
“We have tried to bring younger people to movies and to bring them in particular to Greek movies. In part it’s a little bit of a battle we can’t completely control, because at the end of the day we don’t make the films… sometimes those films are relevant to people, and sometimes they’re not,” Jorge continued.
There’s a belief that films need to feature young people on screen for them to be relevant to a younger audience. While that may be true for some, the GFF curates films rich in Greek culture and language which go far beyond the constraints of just viewing ‘your life’ on screen.
Addressing the shift in storytelling mediums, Jorge said, “We’re now in a world where consuming our stories happen in snippets… the long play form of storytelling is a little bit novel… We are trying to engage by using marketing mediums that hopefully will appear on the little TV screens in front of every person who may be aware of us.”
But even with this shift, there’s still a certain magic to seeing a film on the big screen.
Understanding the value of going to the cinema is 26-year-old Nikita Chronis who is President of the Greek Australian Film Society (GAFS). He founded GAFS to create a space for young Greek Australian filmmakers to unite and showcase their Greek identity on screen.
Nikita told The Greek Herald that when he first started GAFS he saw the festival as a hub for filmmakers to see Greek stories unfold on screen. “I was so excited that something like the Greek film festival existed… It’s such a great festival and every time I go there the atmosphere has been buzzing”.
The raw stories coming from films at the festival give Nikita “great confidence for the future of Australian film and Greek film.”
He encourages young Greek Australian filmmakers to make films which resonate with the public and are infused with Greek stories.
“There is such a buzz with the quality of films that are coming out of the Greek film festival and that are coming out of Melbourne, and Australia in general,” he said. “You stand out against the noise of a lot of the social media saturation we have at the moment.”
23-year-old John T attended MGFF for the first time last year and told The Greek Herald he’s eager to return.
“There’s never really the opportunity to watch Greek films on the big screen,” he said. “It’s nice being able to consume Greek media in a public atmosphere with other like-minded individuals.”
John acknowledges the prevalence of digital media. “In this day and age we have everything at our fingertips—literally any movie in the world. Because we have so much choice, many of us don’t really make the most of that. But going to the cinema is an opportunity to see something specific that maybe at home you would never think of watching… especially when it’s Greek, it’s something we rarely have the opportunity to do.”
John’s personal connection to Greek culture is an incentive to attend the festival. “It’s different watching something in Greek about my culture and people, it’s almost a sense of belonging.”
John only wishes the festival could run for longer. “Two weeks isn’t enough time to watch even a handful of films,” he said, hoping it will be extended for future years.
The Greek Film Festival indeed faces challenges in appealing to younger audiences, but ultimately the experience of connecting culturally with others in the cinema space will keep Greek cinema and the GFF relevant.
