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    GREECE: Cinobo Opera & Cinobo Patision, Athens

    Cinobo Opera
    Akadimias 57, Athens

    Walk down Akadimias Street in the centre of Athens and you will find a cinema that has been showing films since 1948. For decades, Opera was where the city went to the movies. When the cinemas of central Athens began to disappear, Opera was set to be turned into a theatre. Instead, in 2023, Cinobo, the Greek streaming platform for independent and arthouse film, decided to keep its lights on.

    Three years later, Opera has three times the audience, and a new life. Fully renovated, it now has three screens and a bar hidden in the basement, where conversations about the film you just saw tend to go on long after the credits.

    The programme follows one rule: films worth leaving the house for. New European and international releases every week, the most talked-about titles from the festival circuit, great classics restored for the big screen, retrospectives of Greek and world filmmakers, and special nights with directors in the room.

    Opera is part of a small family of Athens cinemas run by Cinobo, alongside Cinobo Patision and the open-air Cine Paris under the Acropolis. A natural home for European cinema in Athens, and for the audiences who seek it out.

    Cinobo Patision
    Patission 79, Athens

    Opened in 1961 on Patission Avenue, one of the main streets of central Athens, this historic cinema was a local landmark for decades, until it was about to close for good. Cinobo stepped in to save it. With film critic and programmer Akis Kapranos as curator, it was reborn as Cinobo Patision.

    Cinobo Patision is the underground heart of Athens’ film scene. The programme mixes cult films and classics with new releases and exclusive premieres, along with retrospectives, film marathons, Q&As, previews and even cosplay events. Its signature is Midnight Express, Kapranos’s series of late-night screenings, which has built a devoted following of its own.

    The numbers tell the story: last season, 486 screenings, 36 special events, 7 exclusive premieres, 6 director retrospectives, 2 festivals and more than 45,000 viewers.

    But what really defines Patision is its audience. People come for films they want to see again, films they never caught on the big screen, and films they didn’t know they needed to see. Then they come back the next week.