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There are few narrative tropes seemingly less interesting in today’s film world than the “men behaving like children” subset of film comedy. Be it the Apatow suspended adolescence comedies or the vulgar auteurism (using the actual definition of both of those words and not the confoundingly ridiculous critical term) of Todd Phillips, cinema has become flooded with tales of men at their worst seeking some sort of redemption while never quite maturing in the process. That is, until director Athina Rachel Tsangari jumped into the fray.

While fellow Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos has garnered the majority of headlines out of the seemingly still young New Wave of Greek cinema, it has been Tsangari (who helped produce Lanthimos’ masterpiece, Dogtooth) who has brought to the screen some of the most exciting films out of Greece in ages. Debuting with the impossible-to-see The Slow Business Of Going, it took her roughly...

Over the past few years, Greek cinema has gained more prominence on the world screen, led by a number of filmmakers, directors, and writers. Among the key names are writer Efthymis Filippou and filmmaker Athina Rachel Tsangari. Filippou is known mostly for his collaborations with filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos, with the duo having worked together on Dogtooth, Alps, and the upcoming The Lobster. Tsangari, on the other hand, had a ten year gap between her debut feature The Slow Business of Going, and her follow-up Attenberg. She has cut that time in half for her third film, however.

Titled Chevalier, the film sees Tsangari and Filippou collaborating for the first time, as they co-wrote the screenplay, with Tsangari taking on directing duties. The film’s synopsis is as follows.

In the middle of the Aegean Sea, six men on a fishing trip on a luxury yacht decide to play a game.

An entire decade happened between Athina Rachel Tsangari’s first and second films, 2000’s “The Slow Business of Going” and 2010’s “Attenberg,” which we we loved. As quickly as she could, Tsangari went back behind the camera for this year’s “Chevalier.” Although that film still hasn’t premiered, the Greek director isn’t wasting time in setting up a follow-up. The “Attenberg” director is planning a “screwball action thriller” titled “White Knuckles” that's partially set in New York and “centers on two criminal sisters (a burglar and a bookkeeper) dealing with Vat fraud, amour fou, architectural infiltration, and electrically amplified fist fighting.” Uh, wowsers, yes. Tsangari is reportedly re-teaming with her “Attenberg” star, Ariane Labed, who won the Best Actress award at the Venice International Film Festival for that film. Tsangari’s third directorial outing, the buddy comedy “Chevalier,” has its world premiere next month at the Locarno...

If there’s anything to be learned from his filmography, it’s that Darren Aronofsky marches to the beat of his own drum. It seems we might have jinxed the “Noah” filmmaker last August when we reported that he finally lined up a gig—an adaptation of the bona-fide spy novel “Red Sparrow”—instead of dropping one, which has seemed to be his m.o. over the past couple of years, the biblical epic aside. THR reports Aronofsky has moved on from the project after negotiating with 20th Century Fox since last fall. The studio still intends to move forward with the project and Aronofsky is still on the hunt for his follow-up to “Noah.” It’s been three years since we first saw Athina Rachel Tsangari’s “Attenberg,” which we were big fans of, but “The Slow Business of Going” director will soon begin shooting her follow-up. The Greek...

The following is a reprint of our review from 2011.

Thanks to the hard-working welcoming committee of Athina Rachel Tsangari's "Attenberg," we are at first introduced to a white wall, where cracks and stains abound. Two young women, Marina (Ariane Labed) and Bella (Evangelina Randou, "Kinetta") dip into the frame, briefly conversing before launching into an unattractive and aggressive tongue union. They detach, with Bella asking if Marina would like to continue her lesson -- but the student claims to no longer have any "spit left." Smelling bullshit from a mile away, Bella teases her but is unsuccessful in her attempt to persuade her friend to resume education. Instead, they get on all fours and act like animals, swiping at one another before finally walking out of the shot. We're left, again, with that bland wall, only now the camera has pulled out a bit further to reveal some small windows and not-particularly-healthy grass.

Last year, the Austin connections at the Oscars were easy to spot: actress Sandra Bullock and musician Ryan Bingham, both of whom brought home the little gold guys. This year, Austin is a little less obvious in the Academy Award nominations, but you can still find local connections if you poke around a bit. Let's hope some of these folks walk away with awards next month:

John Hawkes: Supporting Actor, Winter's Bone -- Hawkes (pictured at right) started his career in Austin before his role in this excellent movie, which played SXSW 2010. You can find him in a couple of Austin-shot movies, too: he's in Eve's Necklace and going back a few years, plays a liquor-store clerk in From Dusk Til Dawn.Dogtooth: Foreign Language Film, Greece -- One of the film's producers is Athina Rachel Tsangari, a filmmaker who divides her time between Greece and Austin. She was...

You might be surprised to learn that, one of the producers on Yorgos Lanthimos' sophomore, Un Certain Regard-winning feature, was a Nyu grad and part of the emerging indie scene in Austin. While obtaining her Mfa in film production at the University of Texas, Greek born Athina Rachel Tsangari was a full fledged Austinite who co-founded and was the artistic director of the Cinematexas International Short Film Festival (programming the early shorts from the likes of Weerasethakul, Reichardt, Maddin, Miranda July, Don Hertzfeld) and get this, her first introduction to feature film was a small role in Richard Linklater's seminal film, Slacker. Prior to wearing the producer's hat on Lanthimos' debut film Kinetta and being the associate producer on Dogtooth, she directed first feature film in 2000's The Slow Business of Going (voted amongst the year’s best “first” features by the Village Voice Critics Poll in 2002) which evolved from her thesis film Fit,...