Greek film director Thanasis Neofotistos is currently in post-production on his much-talked-about feature debut, The Boy with Blue Eyes. The film is a genre-defying coming-of-age story about fear, superstition, and acceptance, set deep in the Greek countryside. The director plans to screen the film in the ongoing program of the industry section “Agora” of the Thessaloniki Film Festival, which will be held from November 2nd to 6th.
The Boy with the Blue Eyes, written by Neofotistus and Grigoris Skalakis, follows Peter, a teenager, as he journeys through the stifling confines of a superstitious, traditional village society. Born with light blue eyes, he was considered a bad omen by the villagers, but his mother forced him to wear a mask, claiming he was suffering from a horrible “eye disease” to prevent his true nature from being revealed.
Growing up in this blissful ignorance, Peter and his best friend Amon one day embark on an adventure to visit a mythical wind turbine far from their village. Eventually, he learns the disturbing truth about his eyes and the lies he has been told, and is forced to make a painful reckoning in order to be free. Neophotistos describes the film as “an allegory about acceptance in a society that resists being different,” adding, “It’s for everyone who feels like they don’t belong and struggles to understand why.”
The director’s long-awaited feature debut has been a long time in the making, having been conceived nearly a decade ago at First Things First, the Goethe Institute-backed academy for young filmmakers in southeastern Europe. He describes it as a “roller coaster.” The script was developed through the Mediterranean Film Institute and the Sarajevo Screenplay Station and has been selected to participate in the 2022 Cannes Focus Copro.
Neofotistos did not sit back and watch during his long gestation, shooting several acclaimed short films, including “Avenue Patission” (2018), which was shown in Venice and Clermont-Ferrand, and 2022’s Locarno premiere “Airhostess-737”, which was shown at Sundance, Toronto, Clermont-Ferrand and was acquired by The New Yorker last year.
“The Boy with the Blue Eyes” ultimately took shape as an elaborate seven-nation co-production between Greece (Argonauts Productions, Atalante Productions), Cyprus (Yannis Economides Films), North Macedonia (Sektor Films), Croatia (Studio Corvus), Serbia (Sense Production), Romania (Luna Film) and the United States (WILLA, Astrakan Film, Cold Iron Pictures).
The film is deeply personal to Neophotistos, who was born in Epirus, a mountainous region on the border of Greece and Albania, and grew up in a conservative family with deep ties to religion and superstition. The director, who knew from an early age that he was gay, admitted that he had a difficult childhood.
“I felt really, really alone,” Neofotistos told Variety. “My family didn’t accept me. But they weren’t the only ones. I didn’t accept myself. Being gay was considered a flaw in my family. I hid my identity.”
In high school, the director was bullied for being different, and grew up feeling isolated and lonely. As a result, he took refuge in film and literature, finding a creative spark that put him on track to become a film director. “I was trying to create a universe to escape this reality,” he said. “That’s how I became a storyteller.”
The Boy with Light Blue Eyes relies heavily on the director’s world-building abilities. He describes the film as a “dark folk tale” set in a “timeless” place ruled by religion and superstition, and seen entirely from the perspective of the young protagonist, a perspective that offers viewers a “fusion of reality and imagination.” Neofotistus cites Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth as an inspiration, saying that while it is “not a fantasy film” per se, it is a film that “uses elements of folk tradition and magical realism to tell a very simple story about diversity and acceptance.”
The film is built around the myth of the evil eye, a superstition widespread not only in Greece but also in the Balkans and wider regions, where genetically rare blue-eyed people have traditionally been viewed with fear and suspicion. That “fear of the unknown,” Neophotistus said, made The Evil Eye “the perfect allegory” for his stories about otherness and acceptance.
Although the director’s own coming-out journey inspired the film, and there is a strong “queer subtext” throughout, Neofotistos said The Boy with Blue Eyes is not “100% a gay awakening story.” Rather, it tells a more universal story about the difficult path many people have to take in order to finally find themselves.
“They are only able to truly come to terms with themselves when they understand what has made them misfits and outcasts in their communities. And often, this liberation comes at an important cost,” the director said. “In my experience, after a painful adulthood, something amazing happens in the end.”
Thessaloniki Film Festival runs from October 30th to November 9th.
