05/29/2026 with Theo Avgerinos

Theo Avgerinos is a Greek-American filmmaker, director, and photographer based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He's been behind a camera since he was a kid with his dad's Super 8mm, and the pattern has been consistent ever since: get interested in someone's story, then figure out how to tell it.

A 2000 graduate of Bucknell University, where he co-founded the school's first student film production company and established its first interdepartmental Cinema Studies major, Theo has directed three independent feature films. His debut, Fifty Pills, premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival with a cast including Kristen Bell, Jane Lynch, and Michael Peña; his second, Americons, received a national AMC theatrical release. His latest, the feature documentary Rising Hope, was shot anamorphically over five years in the Mississippi Delta — a film about generational poverty and the people refusing to give up on each other. It won Best Mississippi Film and the Audience Award at the 2024 Oxford Film Festival, and went on to take Best Documentary and Best Director at the Golden Gate International Film Festival, among other honors.

http://www.risinghopefilm.com/