Document Type
Response or Comment
Publication Date
5-31-2026
Abstract
This document comprises the closing ceremony remarks delivered by Professor Katerina Zacharia on May 31, 2026, at the 20th Los Angeles Greek Film Festival (LAGFF). The award, funded by the Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts, Department of Classics & Archaeology at Loyola Marymount University, recognizes outstanding fiction films that engage with themes of migration, displacement, identity, and social inclusion in contemporary Greece and the Greek diaspora. The remarks present two inaugural LMU Prizes for Social Justice in the fiction categories. The first award — Best Fiction Short Film — goes to The Wolves Return, written and directed by Stelios Moraitidis, in its North America Premiere, a precise and haunting film about collective silence, moral decay, and the cost of what communities choose to bury. The second award — Best Feature Fiction Film — goes to Maysoon, written and directed by Nancy Biniadaki, an unsparing portrait of belonging, displacement, and identity, carried by an extraordinary performance by Sabrina Amali — a story that echoes Euripides' Medea and its enduring resonance in the lives of women who build their worlds in countries not their own, only to watch them dissolve around them.
Digital Commons @ LMU & LLS Citation
Zacharia, Katerina, "Inaugural LMU Prize for Social Justice for Fiction — Closing Ceremony Remarks: 20th Los Angeles Greek Film Festival" (2026). Classics and Archaeology Faculty Works. 19.
https://digitalcommons.lmu.edu/classics_fac/19
