Mission
Recording Thessaly before it is lost.
ORIA FILMS is a non-profit civil law company based in Larissa, Greece. We research and record the places, people and culture of Thessaly in words, photographs and films, and publish them freely on Exploring Thessaly, with no advertising.
Why
Mountain villages are emptying, the last craftsmen are closing their workshops and the memories of the elderly are being lost with them. What is not recorded now will never be recorded.
Every light, a village.
How we work
- 1
Research first
Before we go to a place we read what has been written about it: books, archives, census records. We check every fact against more than one source and, where we can, talk to the people of the place.
- 2
Then recording
We write, photograph and film, including from above with a certified drone pilot. Nobody appears who does not want to.
- 3
Published for everyone
Everything we make is published freely in Greek, and most of it in English too. When we get something wrong, we correct it openly.
Our programmes
01The village guide
Every town, village and settlement in Thessaly with its own page: its place on the map, its population in each census, its altitude and the villages nearby.
The villages →
02The magazine
Stories about places, monuments and culture, and news about what is happening in the towns and villages, written from many sources.
Places →
03Practical guides
Meteora, Mount Olympus, Pelion, Lake Plastiras, the Sporades: opening hours, tickets and routes, with facts we check and the date we checked them.
The guides →
04The history of Thessaly
The history of each regional unit, from the Neolithic to today, written simply for anyone who wants to understand where they are.
The history →
05For children and schools
Free geography and history games, “Little Explorers” and “Bring Kryovrysi back to life”, so children learn about their place by playing (in Greek).
The games →
06Video
Short films and aerial footage of the places of Thessaly, to see them as they are today.
The videos →
So far
- 1,009
- 65
- 9
- 0
Editorial independence
- Nobody pays to appear in a story or a guide. Where we recommend places to stay, eat or visit, we choose them ourselves.
- We carry no advertising and no affiliate links.
- Where there is sponsorship, it is clearly credited, and it does not buy the content.
How we are funded
We accept donations from readers and commissions to record places from municipalities, associations and the diaspora. All income is used only for research, filming and running the magazine, and is never distributed as profit.