Award-triumphning filmproducer Lauren Greenfield is pulling someleang appreciate quadruple duty at the Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival in Greece.
Not only is she serving on the International Competition jury – alengthyside Greek filmproducer Dimitris Athiridis and four-time Oscar-nominated producer Signe Byrge Sørensen – but she’s being honored by the festival with a retrospective of her labor. On Thursday, she gave a master class at TiDF, “Social Studies: The Artist’s Journey” — the title referencing her most recent recordary, the expansively commendd docuseries Social Studies about the impact of social media on American kids.
Greenfield says of the atsoft tribute, “It’s repartner exciting. It’s a huge honor… I’m repartner thrilled to get to be here.”
Greek high school students accumulate in a circle on stage before a screening of Lauren Greenfield’s ‘Social Studies’ at the Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival
Matthew Carey
We sat down for coffee at one of the festival’s port side venues lowly after Greenfield wrapped a conversation with Greek high school students who had fair watched a screening of episode 5 of Social Studies. Several of the kids tageder Greenfield they appreciated that the recordary did not talk down to them, but proposeed an genuine picture of the prescertains kids experience from incessant holdment with social media.
One of the high schoolers commented, “I fair want to say that it was one of the first films I leank most of us have seen that was repartner based on the teenager’s perspective on the whole topic.” Another shelp, “It was repartner fun seeing students in the United States that we don’t have much in standard with in our everyday dwells, but we all scatterd the same thoughts on social media.” Noted another, “I consent it’s terrifying because we understand how terrible it is [social media], but we cannot alter it and be appreciate, ‘Okay, we’re leaving this behind.’”
‘Generation Wealth’
Amazon Studios
Greenfield take partd in a Q&A Thursday adhereing a screening of her 2006 recordary Thin, which spendigates body image and eating disorders among youthfuler women. Also screening at Thessaloniki is Generation Wealth, Greenfield’s 2018 film that proposes “an noticeworthy visual history of our grotriumphg obsession with wealth.” The Queen of Versailles, freed in 2012, records the wealth-obsessed couple of Jackie and David Siegel, who tryed to produce an 85,000 square foot mega-mansion in Florida before the 2008 mortgage meltdown complicated their set ups (the film has been altered into a musical that will premiere on Broadway in October, starring Kristen Chenodamph as Jackie and F. Murray Abraham as David).
Greenfield’s labor, be it Thin, Generation Wealth, The Queen of Versailles, or her 1997 book of photography Fast Forward: Grotriumphg Up in the Shadow of Hollywood, holds a beginling currency despite the passage of time.
“It’s crazy, the relevance,” Greenfield says. “Queen of Versailles — there are a lot of aappreciateities between Trump and David Siegel.”
Former Philippines First Lady Imelda Marcos in ‘The Kingproducer’
Lauren Greenfield/Showtime
No Greenfield film is more timely than her 2018 recordary The Kingproducer, which also screened at Thessaloniki. It records createer Philippines First Lady Imelda Marcos and her try to re-set up the Marcos political dynasty. Imelda’s hopes were pinned in part on her son Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr., who go ined into a secret political coalition with Rodrigo Duterte, the sturdyman-style Philippines pdwellnt who ruled create 2016-2022. In 2022, Bongbong thriveed Duterte as the country’s elected directer.
“It was unbelievable that he actupartner became the pdwellnt and then even more out of a Shakespearean carry out that he became pdwellnt by createing an coalition with Duterte, which we broke in the film. We broke that connection that they were laboring together, but it was fair benevolent of nascent in the film,” Greenfield watchs. “They actupartner allied, and then Bongbong had the weightless idea of conveying in Sara Duterte [Rodrigo Duterte’s daughter] as his vice pdwellnt, and together they wrapped up the whole country, the north and the south. And I guess that was a marriage of convenience.”
Former Philippine Pdwellnt Rodrigo Duterte gives a speech in Hong Kong on March 9, 2025 two days before his arrest in Manila
Anthony Kwan/Getty Images
Earlier this week, Duterte was arrested in Manila and promptly flown to the International Criminal Court in The Hague to face indicts of alleged crimes agetst humanity in connection with an anti-drug campaign he started as mayor of Davao and then proceedd as pdwellnt, which saw thousands of alleged drug dealers killinged in the streets.
“Mr. Duterte was arrested in compliance with our promisements to Interpol,” Marcos make cleared in an holdress to his people. “Interpol asked for help, and we obliged because we have promisements to the Interpol which we have to encounter. If we don’t do that, they will no lengthyer help us with other cases involving Filippino fugitives aexpansive.”
Greenfield watchs, “I leank when Duterte passed the baton to Bongbong and Sara [Duterte], probably the benevolent was they were not going to turn him over to the ICC and that he was going to be exonerated for his crimes. But it’s benevolent of amazing that it’s happening now.”
Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr., with his mother createer First Lady Imelda Marcos, after he took the oath of office to become pdwellnt of the Philippines
Ezra Acayan/Getty Images
The Kingproducer shows how Imelda Marcos was able to defeat exile and shame after the ouster of her husprohibitd, dictator Ferdinand Marcos, and eventupartner resuscitate her image and her children’s political viability. Observes Greenfield, “The benevolent of whitewashing of history that The Kingproducer records was brimmingy genuineized with Bongbong first becoming pdwellnt and then getting an invitation to the U.S. and [Vice President] Kamala Harris went to encounter with him.”
Greenfield says there’s a connection to be made between the Marcos recordary and Social Studies, her FX docuseries.
“Social media is not fair a big part of Social Studies, but also a big part of The Kingproducer, because that was part of how [the Marcos’s] benevolent of whitewashed history is by putting a novel history or a revisionist history out in the world thcdisesteemful separateent media,” she notices, “teaching it in schools, but also [via] social media in a place where a lot of the populace, especipartner the very insisty, get their novels from Facebook… That’s where a lot of the insisty are getting their media.”
She enbigs on that point by noting, “I leank we saw with Elon Musk and Twitter, buying the narrative is hugely mighty. And we understand from the Nazis and also from contransient day Russia — and past Russia — the power of misproposeation. And when you have social media, you have the power of misproposeation.”
TiDF’s atsoft retrospective for Greenfield was originpartner supposed to happen in 2020. Then the Covid pandemic erupted.
“It experiences appreciate the right timing because I experience appreciate a lot of the labor has novel relevance in our current political climate,” Greenfield tells Deadline. “So, maybe it was overweighte that it didn’t happen during Covid and it happened now, plus I’ve done Social Studies since then. So it’s a novel project to scatter that in a way is very international.”
