BENEATH THE OLIVE TREE

Update: Beneath the Olive Tree will screen at the Sarasota Film Festival on April 17th.

Producer and writer, Sophia Antonini’s (SVA Film & Video 2013) feature documentary “Beneath the Olive Tree” will screen as a Work-In-Progress at New York’s First Time Film Festival (March 5-9, 2015) on Saturday, March 7th at The Core Club. Future film festival are in the pipeline for BTOT, but cannot be disclosed until festivals have made official announcements to the press.

Filmed over the course of four years, and narrated by Academy-Award winner, Olympia Dukakis, the documentary is based on seven notebooks found buried beneath an olive tree on the island of Trikeri, which served as a concentration camp during the Greek Civil War (1946-1949). The notebooks, buried for close to three decades, tell the inspiring stories of survival of the thousands of women political exiles during the war, and explore the involvement of the US and British governments at the time. Stavroula Toska (director) takes the journey back to Greece to shed light on a part of modern history the world knows very little about, and in the process discovers a family secret that shakes her to her core.

After graduating with honors, Antonini was Project Manager at Baboon Animation working directly with creative director, Mike de Seve (Shrek 2, Madagascar). She has written two feature scripts for private clients, as well as script consulting on various scripts for the stage and screen. She is currently working on launching an original web-series as well as completing an M.A. English Teacher degree.