Greek National Opera Co-Production Of Lanthimos's BLEAT To Receive NYFF Premiere

Four time Academy Award nominated Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos's (The Favourite, The Lobster) short film Bleat will receive its United States premiere at the 61st New York Film Festival (NYFF), which will take place from September 29th to October 15th, 2023.

The film features music by J. S. Bach/Knut Nystedt and Toshio Hokosawa which will be performed by a live music ensemble for the premiere at Lincoln Center. Starring Academy Award winning actress Emma Stone (La La Land, The Favourite) and French actor Damien Bonnard, the film is a co-production between The Greek National Opera (GNO) and NEON, originally commissioned as part of the Artist on the Composer program curated by GNO's artistic director Giorgos Koumendakis and NEON's director Elina Kountouri.

The Greek National Opera's participation in this co-production and its United States premiere was made possible by a grant from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) [www.SNF.org] to enhance the GNO's artistic outreach. NEON is a non-profit organization funded by its founder Dimitris Daskalopoulos. 

The GNO and NEON's The Artist on the Composer program commissions innovative modern artists, filmmakers, and producers to create new works complemented by live orchestral music. The concept revolves around artists crafting fresh creations that interact with classical compositions, departing from conventional operatic elements, clichés, and narratives. This aims to introduce unfamiliar audiences to the world of opera and classical music. The musical score of Bleat includes pieces by J.S. Bach/Knut Nystedt and Toshio Hokosawa, which will be played by a live music ensemble during the New York Film Festival premiere hosted at Lincoln Center.

Written, directed and produced by Yorgos Lanthimos, Bleat was shot on the Greek island of Tinos in February 2020 starring Emma Stone and Damien Bonnard. The black-and-white film is Lanthimos' fourth short film. Lanthimos and Stone have additionally collaborated on The Favourite (NYFF56) and Poor Things (NYFF61).  

Against the background of a barren and dry island, the Bleat is set in a rural community in Greece. The death of a much-loved young man (Damien Bonnard) weighs heavily in the air. Grieving villagers sit around the table at his wake, and a young woman (Emma Stone) lurches between devastation at the loss of her partner and an animal instinct for life. The mood of Bleat is somber but intoxicating. It explores ideas of loneliness and connection; death, love and desire; and human and animal interaction (emphasized by the involvement of the Tinos community in making the film). Lanthimos masterfully grasps the audience's attention as people, animals and landscape converge and collide in a raw and unsettling cycle of life and death. In Knut Nystedt's reinterpretation of Bach's funeral song and Toshio Hosokawa's music that accompany the film, the words suggest that death is not an ending but a new companion and a fresh encounter.

Bleat originally received its world premiere at the Stavros Niarchos Hall of the Greek National Opera at the SNFCC on May 6, 2022.

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