The Summer with Carmen, an unapologetically queer comedy, premieres at Showroom Cinema on 27 February 2025. This special preview screening will be accompanied by a Q&A session with director Zacharias Mavroeidis and lead actor Yorgos Tsiantoulas, forming part of the cinema’s LGBTQ+ History Month programme.
The film follows two best friends, Demos (Yorgos Tsiantoulas) and Nikitas (Andreas Lampropoulos), as they navigate the stormy waters of love, creativity and social expectation.
The Summer with Carmen unfolds as a day-long discussion between Demos and Nikitas at the iconic Limanakia rocky beach in the south of Athens, a landmark for the queer community in Greece’s capital. The narrative shifts between the present-day shores of Limanakia and a summer two years prior, when Demos broke up with his long-term boyfriend, Panos, and adopted a dog named Carmen.
The film is self-consciously metatheatrical: Demos and Nikitas explore how best to transform the events of that summer into a script they’re writing. The script is eagerly awaited by a French film producer, Jean-Sebastian, who hopes to set his light-hearted, low-budget queer film in Athens.
The film’s original soundtrack blends baroque music with rebetiko, a popular Greek genre centred around the bouzouki, a long-necked lute. At its core, The Summer with Carmen is a comedy, but it also delves into heartbreak, masculinity and the struggles of creative self-actualisation, while offering a refreshing portrayal of platonic love between gay men (and their dogs).
Director Zacharias Mavroeidis studied architecture in Thessaloniki before pivoting to theatre in Madrid, scriptwriting in Cuba and filmmaking in Athens. He has produced several critically acclaimed features. His debut film, The Guide, screened at LGBTQ+ film festivals across the globe, followed by his second film, Defunct, which won the Young Jury and Audience Award at the Thessaloniki International Film Festival, as well as Best Film at Kinenova IFF 2020.
The script for The Summer with Carmen was a collaborative effort between Mavroeidis and his longtime best friend, Xenofon Chalatsis. As Mavroeidis describes, the idea for the film was inspired by real-life events, and any resemblance to reality is “far from coincidental.”
The screening at Showroom further bolsters Sheffield’s lineup of events marking LGBTQ+ History Month, joining films such as Thelma & Louise (Curzon) and Wende Cragg Documents the Birth of Mountain Biking (Gut Level) in amplifying queer stories on the big screen.
The special preview screening of The Summer with Carmen, followed by a director Q&A, takes place at Showroom Cinema, Sheffield, on 27 February 2025 at 6pm. The film will then screen at Showroom from 28 February to 6 March 2025.
Tickets and more info: Showroom Cinema
