RED RIVER
HD video, 15 min., 2026
Red River is a short live-action film presenting the emotional complexity that is
brought upon us by the current political climate. Shot entirely from the strict
subjective viewpoint of an unspecified protagonist, the film resembles the visual
frame of a first-person shooter video game frame: the audience sees events
through the lead character's eyes. In the scenes shot predominantly in the former
Jewish Ghetto of Thessaloniki, the character wonders through eerily empty streets,
checks reels from the ongoing genocide in Palestine, hums an old Greek folk song
and encounters awkward passers-by. Eventually, he ends up in an unfamiliar,
hellish landscape covered in dark ash and fumes, as if he walked from the past into
the future, or as if his confused mood materialised an environment for itself.
Shot in Thessaloniki and Mount Papandayam in Indonesia, Red River blends two
radically different landscapes into a seamless continuity, through which
reverberates a folk song: I kissed red lips, which dyed my lips red, which dyed a
kerchief, which dyed a river
...
Reflecting on past and contemporary horrors, the film
poses a question: if we can
’
t believe our eyes, how can we believe our mind?
The work was commissioned by curator Nadja Argyropoulou for the 9th Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art, “everything must change. RIS9,” October 2025 – July 2026, organized by MOMUS.