about the director

Tzeli Hadjidimitriou was born and raised on the island of Lesvos, Greece and is an award-winning filmmaker, fine art photographer, and writer. Her photographs, which capture liminal atmospheres, places and people, have been exhibited in solo and group shows in Australia, China, Italy, Turkey and Greece and and have been published in ten books. 

After attending a series of seminars by Michelangelo Antonioni on the art of cinematography, she pursued further studies in Cinematography in Rome.

Tzeli has been filming and photographing the lives of the inhabitants of Lesvos since 1990. In her work, she uses all her experiences and capacities, aiming to give space and voice to ordinary people, who are not famous or considered extraordinary in any way, but who live their lives in simplicity, outside the daily headlines.

She captures liminal atmospheres, places, people in her photographic books ‘39 Coffee Houses and a Barber’s shop’; in the ‘Sacred Water: The Mineral Springs of Lesvos’; in ‘In Communion With Stone’, about the rural architecture of Lesvos. 

She works as a consultant for television on programs about Sappho and Lesvos. Her guide ‘A girl’s Guide to Lesbos’ is the first guide for the island that speaks about the story of the lesbian community in the village of Eressos and her connection to the ancient poet Sappho.
Her short films have been screened across the world and won several awards.
In her documentary ‘In Search of Orpheus’ she meets local fishermen, who tell her their stories of life and place woven through the myth of Orpheus.
Recent films focus on gender, including "Sappho’s Granddaughters", where the older women of Eressos tell their moving stories; ‘Mr Dimitris and Dimitroula’, a rare record of a gender-nonconforming person on Sykamia Lesvos, who tragically lost his/her life after being unjustly detained in a mental asylum; and ‘Sappho singing’, a joyful ode to Sappho, who revisits contemporary Lesvos.
‘Lesvia’ is her first feature documentary.