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Riot Police Deployed at Thessaloniki Premiere of Women’s Rights Doc ‘Stray Bodies’ Amid Far-Right Threats
Riot police were mobilized amid fears that religious groups would try to disrupt the premiere of a film whose poster has been called 'blasphemous.'
The episode — which came just days after a horrific attack on a transgender couple shocked the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival — capped off a heated two weeks since the first images of the poster for “Stray Bodies” were released on social media, rattling right-wing lawmakers and commentators in the conservative Orthodox nation. Meanwhile, opposition lawmaker Kyriaki Malama, of the left-wing Syriza party, said that such proclamations from Victory’s “uninvited inquisitor” “cannot shake our democratic freedoms,” adding: “To these gentlemen and to the Middle Ages they represent, we reply that we call on the world to be at the screening of the documentary at the Thessaloniki festival to raise a shield of democracy against their dangerous views.” On Monday, Greek deputy minister of culture Christos Dimas rejected calls on the government to intervene, citing the constitution’s protection for freedom of expression and asserting that “under no circumstances does the state attempt to censor art,” insisting: “In no way is the Orthodox Christian faith in danger from [a movie poster].”
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