A poem. A song. An argument. An apology. Inspired by the unfortunate tragedy of a police special guard who killed a student in the Exarchia district of Athens, a seemingly ordinary (final) day of a teenager is the basis for Greek filmmaker Jacqueline Lentzou‘s sophomore feature — a metaphysical meditation on youth and death where the boundary between the physical and spiritual world gets obliterated. A Day in the Life of Jo: Chapter Phaedra veers into the experimental — moving from observational coming-of-age drama into avant-garde abstraction with a deep degree of warmth and empathy — it’s a bold piece of cinema that both disrupts and soothes.
Selected in the Orizzonti section at the 2026 Venice Film Festival, I had the chance to sit down with the filmmaker to discuss among other items the idea of challenging conventional narrative forms and the physical/technical act of sabotage that occurs in the film. A few days after this interview, Lentzou won the Orizzonti Award for Best Director.
