Thessaloniki

Introducing the Guest of Honor, the Director of the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival, Dimitris Eipides said: "Each year, it is the tradition of the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival to honor the work of a distinguished documentary maker whose work has contributed to the broadening and development of the genre on an international scale." He added: "This is the second time in the last ten years that we have honored a director from Finland. In the past we have honored Pirjo Honkasalo, and this year we are honoring an artist who is just as important, Arto Halonen."

"An award such as today's is a special moment of affirmation in the life of a film maker, given all the difficulties and obstacles we face in our work", the distinguished director noted. He accepted the award from the Artistic Director with particular joy, and added: "I have been following the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival for years, it is a great joy for me to see it grow. This makes today's honor to me even more important. I thank the Documentary Festival, I thank Thessaloniki

Following the conclusion of the ceremony, the audience had the opportunity to see Arto Halonen's most recent work, Shadow of the Holy Book. In the film, the Finnish documentary maker tracks the means by which the dictatorship in Turkmenistan was established, through the sequence of events and elements that gave the necessary alibi to the western world to support it, in the guise of a "cultural" exchange.