George Karypidis (1946-2019) is one of those rare examples of Greek directors who have observed and recorded in a meticulous yet lyrical way the Greek reality of four decades.

Born in the city of Thessaloniki in 1946, George Karypidis and his diverse cinema have been inextricably linked to the Thessaloniki Film Festival from a very early age. The beginning was in 1975, when the excellent Last Station, Kreuzberg won the Second Prize in the Short Film category. In 1979, the short film The Painter Theophilos was honored with three awards (including the Best Short Film of the Festival), while three years later, his feature debut, Dangerous Game (1982), won the Panhellenic Union of Film Critics Award. In 1988, the moment of triumph came, as the film In the Shadow of Fear won 7 awards – including those for Best Picture and Best Director – and was selected as Greece’s official submission for the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film at the 61st Academy Awards.

Equally noteworthy, but also shockingly productive, was the activity of Giorgos Karypidis in the documentary genre. Initially, he worked as a director at the Berlin public radio station (SFB), while he later directed a multitude of documentaries for Greek television, and in particular for the legendary ERT shows Monogram and Paraskenio. A multidimensional and pluralistic spirit, Giorgos Karypidis moved beyond the boundaries of cinema. A large number of his articles and short stories have been published in magazines and newspapers, while his writing credits include the books: East of Zanzibar, The Dialect of the Scorpion and Diving Champion. Throughout the work of George Karypidis, the concepts of escape and wandering dominate, through spectral characters and fluid stories that slip away from reality and everyday life.

George Karypidis waved goodbye to us in January 2019, at the age of 73, and at the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival that year, Achilleas Kyriakides gave him a particularly moving farewell: “George Karypidis stood out not only for his work, but also for his integral and special personality. Those who knew him closely speak of a man whose attitude to life was completely in line with his beliefs. Uncompromising and visionary, with the ideal of a just society. Throughout his life, he was modest, serious and deeply noble, with an immense tenderness for humanity, but especially for the wronged of the planet."