‘Satisfaction’ Digs Up Buried Trauma of Couple on Greek Island Holiday

“The Brutalist’s” Emma Laird and “Dunkirk” star Fionn Whitehead are British composers whose frail bond begins to unravel on a Greek island holiday in Alex Burunova’s “Satisfaction,” a psychological drama that has its Greek premiere Nov. 2 at the Thessaloniki Film Festival.

The film, which bowed earlier this year at SXSW, marks the narrative feature directorial debut of Burunova, who also wrote the script and shares a producing credit. Produced by Perfect Circle Films, Driven Equation, Carte Blanche and Constant Production, it will compete for the Golden Alexander in Thessaloniki’s main competition. U.K.-French sales-production outfit Alief is handling world sales, with UTA repping North American rights.

“Satisfaction” follows the tumultuous relationship of Lola (Laird) and Philip (Whitehead), two musicians vacationing on a remote, windswept Greek island during the calm of the off-season. Gradually, a palpable discomfort in their relationship comes into focus, a troubling rift that the duo is careful to dance around. 

That changes when the couple bears witness to a frightening scene of domestic abuse, followed by a chance encounter with a beautiful stranger, Elena, played by “Holy Spider” star Zar Amir Ebrahimi, that upsets the delicate balance of power between Lola and Philip. Old wounds are reopened, and the couple’s long-buried trauma threatens to finally emerge into the bright Mediterranean sunlight.

“Satisfaction” had its genesis in a theater play Burunova directed a decade ago, which followed a couple on vacation “struggling to address the invisible weight between them,” she says. In the process of defining that unseen burden, the director realized “it was something I had buried in myself for years, something I wasn’t ready to face.” 

It would take eight years and more than 100 drafts for Burunova to confront that trauma through “Satisfaction,” a film she calls “a…