Biography

Syllas Tzoumerkas was born in 1978 in Thessaloniki. He grew up in Thessaloniki, Kilkis and the island of Nisyros. His first feature film Homeland premiered at the Venice Critics' Week 201o. His second feature A Blast premiered in competition at Locarno 2014, and his third, The Miracle of the Sargasso Sea at the Berlinale Panorama 2019. Acclaimed by the world press and audiences for their distinctive style, bold characterization and strong performances, Tzoumerkas' films have participated in many festivals around the world and have been distributed to theaters and streaming platforms in many countries. His co-direction with Christos Passalis, feature film The City and the City, will have its world premiere at the Encounters Competition of the 72nd Berlinale in February 2022. Syllas Tzoumerkas co-wrote the scripts of Argyris Papadimitropoulos' Suntan (Rotterdam, SXSW, 2016) and Ahmad Ghossein's All This Victory (Venice Critics' Week Award, 2019). He participated as an actor in feature films, shorts and stage performances. He has collaborated with Onassis Stegi, the Greek National Opera, Thessaloniki IFF, the blitz theater group, Youla Boudali and others, in multi-platform and theatrical works. He co-curated with fellow director Elina Psykou, Motherland, I See You - the 20th Century of Greek Cinema, the restoration program and moving festival of the Hellenic Film Academy.
- IMDb mini biography by: Homemade Films

Non-linear storytelling

Powerful female lead characters

Appears as an actor in three films by Argyris Papadimitropoulos: Wasted Youth (2011), Suntan (2016) and Monday (2020).

What the melodrama does, is to force us, through the excess use of passion, of emotional extortion, to see the truth.

Throughout A Blast (2014), Maria confronts herself, her family, her country and the perception of her sex. And in order to do that, she moves to a place where good and bad, the morals of it all, are not what they used to be. And that, for me, makes her a hero worth watching and investigating.

For A Blast (2014): "A politician wants to shrink large amounts of people using a vague agreement as his/her basis, so that they can fit a certain narration. As an artist, I want to do the exact opposite: I try to magnify each person, revealing its full anarchic potential, controversy and disagreement, and then I move on to discover his or her narration"