1st Athens International Literature Festival: Side Events & Useful Information For Visitors

The first edition of the Athens International Literature Festival (AILF) will be taking place at Technopolis City of Athens from 27 to 29 March with free entrance, welcoming visitors to a three-day celebration of the power of literature. Discussions, book signings, masterclasses and a packed slate of side events will transform Technopolis into an open space for thoughtful dialogue and joyful creativity.

Top international writers, among them 2025 Nobel Prize winner László Krasznahorkai and Booker Prize winners David Szalay (2025) and Paul Lynch (2023), will be joined by activists, journalists, athletes, and filmmakers to discuss the hot-button issues of our times, such as identities and gendered violence, migration and the rise of the far right, and the relationship between literature and other aspects of modern life, like politics and cinema.   
  

Entrance to the festival is free, but getting a free entry pass is necessary to participate in the panel discussions that will be taking place in the Gasholder 1 – Auditorium “Miltiadis Evert” and the Purifier Hall. A limited number of passes will be available for early booking through the more.com platform on Monday 23 March at 12:00. The rest will be available at the AILF registration desk two hours before the start of each event and will be distributed on a first-come, first-served basis. Entry pass holders will have to be at the venue 20 minutes prior to the start of the panel. Please allow yourself plenty of time to get to the venue, as latecomers will not be seated and their entry passes will be invalid.  

For those unable to get an entry pass, LED screens in the Upper Courtyard and the INNOVATHENS space will be showing the discussions for all visitors, no booking required. 

Live translation into Greek, English and the Greek sign language will be available for all panel discussions. To get access to the digital translation platform, visitors will be able to scan a QR code prominently displayed at the venue and connect through their mobile phone. To listen to the live translation, visitors will have to use their own headphones.
 

A rich slate of side events will round out the festival, expanding the visitors’ literary experience beyond the venues of the panel discussions and into the city and the world of the imagination. Guided tours of the Industrial Gas Museum and a walking tour of downtown Athens, digital art installations, screenings and musical events make up a diverse program of experiences where literature enters a creative dialogue with Athens and its industrial heritage, music and the moving image, graphic arts and the new technologies. Entrance to the AILF side events will be free on a first-come, first-served basis. 

Literature meets cinema for a night dedicated to the intense and uncompromising gaze of the late Hungarian director Béla Tarr. On Saturday 28 March at 21:00, join us for a screening of the iconic film Werckmeister Harmonies at the Gasholder 1 – Auditorium “Miltiadis Evert”, an evocative, poetic masterpiece that had a profound impact on European cinema. The film will be introduced by Béla Tarr’s long-time collaborator and screenwriter, László Krasznahorkai. 

On Sunday 29 March, after 20:30, the festival will be screening clips from the video installation and filmed public events created by the ongoing community project the AfroGreeks (11 films), an artistic endeavor that is in direct conversation with the themes of the panel Deconstructing “white thinking” on its own turf with Lilian Thuram, Demis Nikolaidis, Lauretta Macauley and moderator Panagiotis Menegos. The project is run by the Døcumatism collective and the Afro-Greek protagonists themselves and is presented as a video installation complemented by public events, workshops, a podcast, musical events, discussions, screenings and audiovisual material from the history of the African diaspora in Greece and the Mediterranean over the past four centuries.

As a Major Sponsor of Technopolis City of Athens, COSMOTE TELEKOM continues to forge new paths at the intersection of Art and Technology, presenting its own Art/Tech Corner at the 1st Athens International Literature Festival. On Saturday and Sunday from 14:00 to 20:00, visitors will have the opportunity to experience an innovative literary universe, where words and stories come alive through immersive, interactive, and multisensory journeys.

What if you could walk inside your favorite book? At the Art/Tech Corner, Immersive Cinema by Poetics transforms storytelling into a new digital experience through 360° VR projections, from the cosmic sci-fi of Arthur C. Clarke in 2001: A Space Odyssey, as visualized by Stanley Kubrick, to the dystopian fantasies of Philip K. Dick. Visitors will also get the opportunity to discover a striking literary and audiovisual work chronicling writer John Hull’s personal journey into the world of blindness, based on his audio diaries. 

 

The Art/Tech Corner hosts two unique works of digital art and literature that allow the written word to escape the page and become a digital experience, curated by the Athens Digital Arts Festival (ADAF). Words, stories, movement, and interaction invite the audience to “read” with their body, gaze, and touch. Invading Space Characters by Vera Sebert is a game where poetic prose about memory loss slowly moves across the screen while the viewer/player destroys characters one by one with a click, opening gaps within the poem itself. As the letters disappear, reading becomes fragile and the text is deconstructed right before our eyes, like memory gradually fading. Acqua Alta by Adrien M and Claire B is a book brought to life through augmented reality. Ink drawings and foldable paper transform into an intimate dance performance. A mundane story is disrupted by a strange flood of ink, transforming a simple narrative into a dreamscape.

 

Highlighting the connection between AILF and the venue hosting it, on Saturday and Sunday at 12:00, the team of the Industrial Gas Museum will lead guided tours for adults and teenagers through Athens’ former gasworks, a rare industrial monument and the best-preserved gas factory in Europe. Participants will meet at the Central Chimney and follow the original gas production line to admire the machinery, experience the factory smells still lingering on site, and gain insight into the workers’ roles and everyday life in the historic Gazi district through historical documents and audiovisual materials.

The first edition of the AILF special section Athens, a city for writers is dedicated to accomplished Greek writer Menis Koumandareas (1931-2014), a formidable chronicler of Athens. On Sunday 29 March, at 11:00, we take to the streets of the city for a walking tour highlighting the landmarks that inspired his writing and instilled his characters with life and specificity. Starting from Hotel Grand Bretagne, we will follow the traces of Koumandareas’ literary heritage from the heart of the city to Monastiraki and Gazi, and get to know the city through his eyes. Guided by Alexandra Tranta, Doctor of Archaeology and Museum Studies and literary executor of Menis Koumandareas, this literary walk explores the neighborhoods, textures, and urban stories that shaped his work. 

As each festival day draws to a close, music takes over and the conversations sparked by the festival continue in a more relaxed, joyful atmosphere. Every night, in the Auditorium Courtyard, three unique dj sets will round out your AILF experience.  

On Friday 27 March, at 21:00, En Lefko 87.7 radio producer Sakis Tsitomeneas sets the tone for AILF with a special DJ set, opening the festival with cinematic soundscapes, pop, electronica, and ambient textures that will get us moving. On Saturday 28 March, at 20:00, radio producer and DJ of Nostos 100.6 Iliana Stergiopoulou, takes over the decks for the second day of AILF, inviting the audience to a unique musical experience full of eclectic sounds, from neo soul, RnB and downtempo to electro jazz, electronica, sophisticated indie, and soul. The closing party of the festival on Sunday 29 March, at 20:30, will be in good hands, with the performers/protagonists of the AfroGreeks project, Tokyo (Tony Youngster) and Pepper & Spice (Konstantinos Kalagbor) delivering a dynamic dj set full of black music, accompanied by open-air screenings of videos from the AfroGreeks community project. 

AILF’s in-depth masterclasses will give participants the chance to gain insight into the creative process of two internationally acclaimed writers, Booker Prize winner Paul Lynch and prominent American novelist Nicole Krauss. After each panel discussion, there will be book signings at the specially modified Old Retorts venue, where visitors will be able to meet and talk to the writers on a first-come, first-served basis. Greek editions of the writers’ books and festival merchandise will be available to buy both at the Technopolis shop and the festival book café, which will take over the INNOVATHENS space. 

At the end of March, in the heart of Athens, literature will provide the inspiration for three days of dialogue, creativity and community. The 1st Athens International Literature Festival will transform Technopolis City of Athens into a space where ideas meet creators and the audience becomes part of a vibrant, multifaceted celebration of literature. 

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See the full program of festival events at ailf.gr

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For all the latest festival news, follow the AILF official accounts. 

Website: www.ailf.gr

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Instagram: @ailf.gr