After a prize-winning premiere at the Venice Film Festival and a busy tour of the fall festival circuit, Greek filmmaker Jacqueline Lentzou's 'A Day in the Life of Jo: Chapter Phaedra' is celebrating a homecoming this week at the Thessaloniki Film Festival, where it is competing for top honors in the main international competition.

Inspired by true events, Lentzou's sophomore feature follows Jo, an unruly and melancholic 15-year-old played by arresting newcomer Evia Andriopoulou, through the ups and downs of an ordinary teenage day. As Jo drifts through a series of seemingly inconsequential moments, the arrival of Phaedra (Anastasia Gouliamou), a bookish classmate whose warbling rendition of an old love ballad reduces Jo to tears, turns the unremarkable day upside down, filling it with possibility as it hurtles toward both tragedy and transformation.

The film premiered in Venice's Horizons strand, where Lentzou won the award for best director, and has since screened at the New York Film Festival, the BFI London Film Festival and the Busan Film Festival. 1-2 Special will release the film in North America.

Speaking with Variety in Thessaloniki, Lentzou said the story grew out of a real tragedy: the 2008 killing of 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos at the hands of Athens police, a death that sparked nationwide protests and riots. The event marked a brutal coming of age for the director's generation and is still commemorated with massive protests every year.

Yet while 'this tragic incident served as the spark for the film,' Lentzou described it as little more than a stepping stone toward a profound and often moving meditation on life and the mystery of what comes after. The narrative unfolds in a loose, episodic fashion. 'All days, at least my days, feel fragmented and non-linear,' she noted.

The film is organized around mundane episodes, including squabbles with Jo's mother (Eleni Vergeti), the girl's sole guardian since her parents' divorce, and a visit from her father, all of which build toward an explosive, audacious and formally bold conclusion. Other, enigmatic encounters recall the signs and symbols that came to Jo in a dream, hinting at the porous borders between sleeping and waking, between conscious and unconscious, and perhaps between life and whatever comes next. At its heart lies what Lentzou calls 'the film's existential game of who and what we truly are.'

The movie is carried by a startling debut performance from Andriopoulou, whom Lentzou said she discovered 'after an exhausting and admittedly disappointing two-month casting session' that ultimately led to an open call. 'My hopes were not very high, yet at some point Evita enters, shyly and very, very gently, and it felt like meeting a part of me,' the director recalled. 'I sensed a wound, a small breakage despite the youth of her age, and this is what led me to choosing her: a girl with whom I could communicate deeply.'

Lentzou praised her young star's work as 'full of pure, honest emotion' and predicted that a recent acting prize Andriopoulou won at the Euro Balkan Film Festival in Rome would be 'the start of a series of accolades.'

The director also credited director of photography Grimm Vandekerckhove, whose striking cinematography captures the complicated play of emotions across Andriopoulou's richly expressive face and lends poetry and meaning to everyday objects and gestures. 'The key in the visual approach, the big question hovering over our heads, was how to depict the invisible (already a contrast in terms), how to make the subtle presence of another awareness felt through our camera work,' Lentzou said, adding: 'I cannot stress enough how much of the film's insane success is owed to Grimm's contribution and faith in the project.'

'A Day in the Life of Jo: Chapter Phaedra' is produced by Avion Films and Atalante Productions in co-production with Kelek Film, 4A4 Productions, ERT and Haris & Co., with Lucky Number handling world sales. The Thessaloniki Film Festival runs Nov. 5 to 15.