“My Grandmother Told Me Not to Bring Home a Blue-Eyed Wife. But I’m a Gay Guy”

In the remote mountain village at the center of Thanasis Neofotistos’ moody debut feature, the superstitious locals have a chant: “Nay Evil, yay Good!” It’s a ritual meant to ward off strangers — and in The Boy With the Light-Blue Eyes the stranger in question is a boy whose unusually blue eyes mark him as a threat to everything the village holds sacred.

The genre-bending Greek film, which can also be read as a queer coming-of-age story, world premieres in the Screen Festival of SXSW London 2026 on Thursday, June 4. Starring Giorgos Karydis as Petros — a boy forced by his strict grandmother and the village mayor to hide behind a mask — the film is written by Neofotistos and Grigoris Skarakis, shot by Djordje Arambasic, and edited by Panagiotis Angelopoulos. Gersh is handling U.S. sales.

A cinematic allegory for exclusion, the longing to be seen and the desire for love and freedom, The Boy With the Light-Blue Eyes uses a symbolic, myth-grounded visual language to tell a story that is rooted in a specific place but unmistakably universal. Neofotistos spoke with THR about the personal experiences behind the film, its 12-year journey to the screen and why the evil eye is more than just a tourist trinket.