ARCHIVE / GOLDEN DAWN PRESS CONFERENCE / 06.05.2012

This film chronicles the events of the first Golden Dawn press conference, after Greek parliamentary election results were announced on May 6th, 2012.

Golden Dawn is a Greek neo-nazi party. It was originally founded in 1980, as a nationalist, pro-military junta magazine by Nikos Michaloliakos. During the elections of May 2012, the party won 6,97% of the popular vote and entered Greece’s parliament for the first time.

While only a fringe far-right movement in the early 1980’s, by campaigning on unemployment and against austerity and immigration during the peak of the Greek economic crisis, Golden Dawn gradually became the third largest party in the Greek Parliament after the January 2015 national elections - despite winning only 17 seats.

On October 7th, 2020, Michaloliakos and six other party leaders were convicted for heading a criminal organisation by the Athens appeals court. The court described the convicted as a criminal organisation ‘dressed in the mantle of a political party’. Verdicts for a total of 68 defendants included charges of murder, attempted murder and violent attacks on immigrants and left-wing political opponents.

Filming: Stéphane Charpentier
Editing, editorial, subtitles: Marcos Andronicou
Audio mixing: Alyssa Moxley