Rolling Stones film raises curtain on Thessaloniki Doc Festival

A movie about the Rolling Stones 2016 Latin America tour, which culminated in their first-ever concert in Cuba, will open this year’s Thessaloniki Documentary Festival (TDF) on Friday.

Shot by British director Paul Dugdale, “The Rolling Stones Ole Ole Ole! A Trip Across Latin America” takes audiences behind the scenes as the veteran rockers tour the region for the first time in 10 years. As evergreen frontman Mick Jagger and the rest of the band play stadiums in Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Peru, Colombia and Mexico, negotiations are taking place for a free show in Havana.

The Rolling Stones formed in London in 1962, three years after Fidel Castro led his bearded rebels to the victorious revolution that ousted US-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista.

In its 19th annual iteration, the TDF will host more more than 213 nonfiction films – including 64 local productions – on a wide range of themes involving politics, migration, art and the environment. Organizers will launch two brand-new sections on cinema and food.

Hosted at the flagship Olympion and Pavlos Zannas cinemas on Aristotelous Square and the red-brick and steel complex on the docks, the 10-day event runs through Sunday, March 12.

Organizers have prepared tributes to award-winning Russian director Vitaly Mansky and Italian avant-garde filmmaking duo Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi.

The festival will also pay homage to pioneering art critic and author John Berger, who died in early January at the age of 90. The Englishman, whose groundbreaking 1972 BBC television series and book “Ways of Seeing” is credited with transforming the way in which a generation interacted with and understood art, is the subject of two documentary films in this year’s lineup.