Films Set in Greece: What to Watch on Your Cinema Night

There is a small moment, once the screen is up and the sun has gone and everyone has a drink, when somebody has to actually choose the film. In my experience this is the point at which a confident group of adults becomes completely useless.

So here is a shortlist worth having ready before you arrive, built around one idea: watching something filmed a short drive from where you are sitting is a different experience to watching it at home in November.

The one filmed on your doorstep

Zorba the Greek (1964) was shot in Crete, and not vaguely — around Chania, on the northern coast. The village is Kokkino Chorio, which sits in Apokoronas. The beach where Anthony Quinn teaches Alan Bates to dance is Stavros, on the Akrotiri peninsula just east of Chania.

If you are staying anywhere between Chania and Georgioupoli, you are within half an hour of both. Watch it on a Tuesday, drive to Stavros on the Wednesday, and the whole thing lands differently — the cliff behind the beach is instantly recognisable and essentially unchanged.

It is a serious film, and a slow one by modern standards. Worth knowing before you put it on for eleven people who were expecting a comedy.

The rest of the Greek shortlist

A caveat worth stating plainly: "set in Greece" and "filmed in Greece" are not the same thing, and plenty of films that feel Greek were shot elsewhere entirely. The locations above are the ones I could verify against film-location sources rather than assume.

The film I would gently talk you out of

Mamma Mia!

It is requested more than everything else on this list combined, and I understand why. But it was filmed on Skiathos and Skopelos, which are in the Sporades — roughly six hundred kilometres north of here, in a completely different sea. Putting it on in Crete is a bit like watching a film about Cornwall while sitting in the Lake District. Lovely. Just not here.

There is also the problem that everybody has already seen it, which removes the one thing an outdoor screening does better than a cinema: the shared surprise.

If somebody in the group has their heart set on it, put it on. Nobody has ever regretted Mamma Mia! But if you want the evening to feel like it belongs to the island you are standing on, there are better choices two rows above.

How to actually choose

A few things I have learned watching people decide badly.

Match the film to the group, not to your own taste. Eleven people is a comedy. Two people is anything you like. Four adults and three children is not the moment for a subtitled classic, however good it is.

Check the language. If half the party are Greek and half are not, that decision needs making before the night rather than at 21:15 with everyone seated. We ask for the film and the preferred language on the enquiry form for exactly this reason.

Keep it under two hours if children are watching. The screen goes up at sunset. A 150-minute film means somebody is carrying a sleeping seven-year-old up a hill.

Check it is actually available. Streaming rights move between services and between countries constantly, and something on Netflix in the UK may not be on Netflix in Greece. Our projector has Netflix, Prime, Disney+ and Apple TV built in, and there is an HDMI input and USB if you would rather bring your own copy — but it is worth checking a few days beforehand rather than discovering the problem in the dark.

Consider not choosing at all. Some of the best evenings we plan involve a personalised opening slide — a title card with the group's own name on it before the film starts. It is €25, it takes thirty seconds, and it is the single thing people photograph most.

If the history of watching films outdoors in this country interests you, we wrote about therino sinema, Greece's open-air cinema tradition. And if Zorba has sold you on the region, the Apokoronas villa guide covers the area Kokkino Chorio sits in.

When you know your dates, tell us about your evening — including the film, if you have decided — and I will come back to you personally.