The ‘Butcher’ is my graduation film. It was shot on a very low budget, casting my closest friends and myself as the lead actors. It took me two years to complete it.
It is a movie that tries to combine film genres so diverse as the thriller, the gangster movie, the horror flick, the neo-noir film into one. Its open parodic intent goes hand in hand with the aspiration of paying a tribute to the aforementioned styles.
In the films I admire characters are driven by their most elementary motives. In this very simplicity, often dismissively regarded as naivety, lies the power of the best among genre films to reach deeper into the facts of life.
I find a particular pleasure in creating characters that one is highly unlikely to meet in real life, fictional worlds that come to life and become true through our shared cinematic experiences, and situations that, transcending the archetypes that inspired them, are able to bring out the hidden side of ourselves.
Dimitris Panagopoulos
Dimitris Panagopoulos
Dimitris Panagopoulos was born in Athens (Greece) in 1990. He is a graduate of the Hellenic Cinema and Television School Stavrakos, where he completed his film studies in 2011. He specializes in post production, where his work experience ranges from editing to visual effects to color grading. In his main occupation as a colorist he has contributed to numerous indepedent short films that have been selected in international film festivals, most notably to the film ''Endemic'' by Giannis Bereris, winner of the best direction award in the 19th Athens International Film Festival. He is also involved as a videomaker in projects outside cinema, usually focusing on collaborations with stage productions. He has taken part in the competition ''Safe driving, safe living'', sponsored by the Greek Ministry of Transports, with his film ''A Child's Play'', co-directed with Chrisanthos Margonis. He is the director of the short film ''The Butcher''.