The Boy With the Light-Blue Eyes, the genre-bending Greek feature film debut of writer-director Thanasis Neofotistos, may be set in a time that is not specified. But the auteur and his creative team serve up visual references to the recent past. Eagle-eyed audiences will even notice a tribute to a certain group of extinct reptiles that, it turns out, inspired the filmmaker who will world premiere the movie as part of the Screen Festival of SXSW London 2026 on Thursday, June 4.

The Boy With the Light-Blue Eyes, a cinematic allegory for exclusion and the desire for love and freedom, which can also be viewed as a queer coming-of-age story, stars Giorgos Karydis as Petros, a boy forced by his strict grandmother, and the village mayor, to hide behind a mask because he has blue eyes. After all, that eye color is a source of fear and superstition for the locals of the remote mountain village where they live.

Co-written by Neofotistos and Grigoris Skarakis, the film features cinematography by Djordje Arambasic, with editing courtesy of Panagiotis Angelopoulos. Gersh is handling U.S. sales.

Ahead of the premiere, Neofotistos shared with THR how he first got hooked on movies. “My biggest role model, my inspiration, is what I call ‘good old-school cinema,’ for example, Jurassic Park by Steven Spielberg,” he explained. “That was the first film I ever saw in the cinema, and I got fascinated with dinosaurs because of it. I felt that dinosaurs really existed in real life when I was less than 10 years old. This was my main inspiration to be a filmmaker.”

The man behind The Boy With the Light-Blue Eyes was also impressed by the craft behind the Spielberg dino blockbuster. “He used animatronics, he used materials that they handmade, handcrafted,” the Greek creative gushed. “It was not VFX, or AI now. It felt so real. The story felt so unique, and I got into this universe. That’s why I wanted to be a storyteller.”

The craft aspects were also a key focus for Neofotistos and his team on The Boy With the Light-Blue Eyes. “I really love to create universes,” he told THR. “So, my goal here was to create something unique and very handcrafted. We didn’t use any AI. We used minimal VFX. Everything was made in the shooting [process].”

His work is “also very much inspired by some Greek filmmakers,” including big names. “For example, the first film of [Theo] Angelopoulos, The Reconstruction, which was made close to my hometown and gives a great representation of societies,” he said. “And Yorgos Lanthimos, a case of a Greek filmmaker who became huge – the magical realism that he uses is something that I’m inspired by.”

Remember how I mentioned those extinct reptiles? Look for them when you watch The Boy With the Light-Blue Eyes! Shared Neofotistos: “There are some dinosaurs in Petros’ room, because of my inspiration from Jurassic Park“.