The Birthday Party

Summer 1975, an unnamed Mediterranean island owned outright by Marcos Timoleon. The Greek shipping magnate is preparing his only daughter Sofia's twenty-fifth birthday party, and the guests are gradually assembling: the English writer who wants Marcos to sign off on the biography he has written; the Franco-loyalist Spanish marquis and his son, Sofia's childhood friend; Olivia, the stepmother Marcos is in the middle of divorcing, who has come to secure a good settlement; and the old friend who is also the family doctor. Over two days everyone wants something, and mostly from Marcos.

Nobody dies — there are only veiled threats and calculation — and yet the whole thing runs like an Agatha Christie novel: a closed setting, a guest list of suspects, everyone lying about something. Cameras are banned on the island, while Marcos records even the conversations Sofia believes are taking place on a safe line. The real stake is the balance of power between father and daughter: Marcos means to protect his legacy at any cost, which requires clipping Sofia's wings. Alongside this, Jiménez quietly satirises the surfaces of wealth — an unappetising prawn here, a misspelled message on the birthday cake there.

Willem Dafoe plays Marcos, a figure plainly modelled on Onassis, though Dafoe doesn't make a caricature of him: grief and uncertainty break through at unexpected moments. He has a long scene dancing alone, and for as long as it lasts the world seems to fall away around him. Sofia is played by the Danish actress Vic Carmen Sonne (The Girl with the Needle), with Joe Cole (Peaky Blinders), Emma Suárez, Carlos Cuevas and Christos Stergioglou of Dogtooth in support.

The film is adapted from Panos Karnezis's 2007 novel of the same name; Jiménez wrote the screenplay with Giorgos Karnavas and Nicos Panagiotopoulos, cutting most of the protagonist's backstory to leave room for the scheming of the present. Gris Jordana shot it in Corfu and Athens. Emma Suárez previously appeared in Jiménez's debut feature, Ventanas al mar.

The world premiere was at the Piazza Grande section of the Locarno Film Festival in August 2025, followed by the Sarajevo festival's open-air programme. Critics are divided: Screen Daily called it "a stylish tale of hedonism and heartbreak," the Guardian gave it three stars out of five and found it a strong, confidently built picture, while RogerEbert.com concluded that not even Dafoe can save this particular soirée. What most of the reviews agree on is Dafoe's performance.

→ The film on IMDb