The Unknown Voice of Greek Cinema

"In an abandoned city, strident loudspeaker announcements urge the residents to leave, while the televisions playing in the empty houses show old movies. Only one woman can be seen walking along, by memory reciting phrases of famous books. When the town's sole male inhabitant spots her, he appears to be chasing after her, but when they finally encounter one another it becomes clear that his intentions are benign. Like her, he wants to know what happened and can't remember. Meanwhile, it appears that either the military's Morning Patrol or its various ingenious traps will capture them."(Clarke Fountain)

"Alexandre, a TV reporter, is working for a few days in a border town, where a lot of refugees from Albania, Turkey and Kurdistan are packed in. Among them, he notices an old man and thinks he his an important greek politician who disappeared misteriously a few years ago. Back in Athens, he asks this politician's former wife to come and identify him. A slow and dry meditation about inhumanity of borders."(Yepok)

A lovable Scene:

"In this black comedy, the men in a lovely mansion slowly give in to a kind of terminal sloth after they are freed from the need to actually work. The father takes to his bed after his hernia acts up and never leaves it. Of his three sons, only one wants to do much about leaving, and he does in fact cross the front threshold of the house with his lover, who is also the maid. However, before he has gotten very far, he is very tired, and goes to sleep where he stands. One of the sons outdoes them all by sleeping literally all the time. He is not in a coma -- he is just very, very lazy and tired. Some critics have viewed this film as a sharply delineated social satire."(Clarke Fountain)

"The father, the mother and their three kids live at the outskirts of a city. There is a tall fence surrounding the house. The kids have never been outside that fence. They are being educated, entertained, bored and exercised in the manner that their parents deem appropriate, without any influence from the outside world. They believe that the airplanes flying over are toys and that zombies are small yellow flowers. The only person allowed to enter the house is Christina. She works as a security guard at the father’s business. The father arranges her visits to the house in order to appease the sexual urges of the son. The whole family is fond of her, especially the eldest daughter. One day Christina gives her as a present a headband that has stones that glow in the dark and asks for something in return." (Official Site)

A lovable scene:

An impressive documentary about the remoted greek island of Amorgos.

A cinematography study about the psychology of the crime.

"One wonderful summer in the life of two Greek boys on the isle of Chios provides the basis of this episodic drama. The year is 1960 and it is the summer before the rambunctious lads will enter the fifth grade. They have great fun and have many fine adventures that include a war with a nest full of enraged hornets, making fun of the village idiot, getting sick on stolen plums, and rescuing a lost dog."(Sandra Brennan)

A lovable scene:

"This film takes place at a small village at the greek island of Chios, sometime around 1960. When the local field watchman dies, the agronomist must assign a new field watchman to be responsible for this village. We watch as four different people take this job and fail one after the other..."(Chris Makrozahopoulos)

"Marina, 23, is growing up with her architect father in a prototype factory town by the sea. Finding the human species strange and repellent, she keeps her distance. Instead she chooses to observe it through the songs of Suicide, the mammal documentaries of Sir David Attenborough, and the sexual-education lessons she receives from her only friend, Bella.

A stranger comes to town and challenges her to a foosball duel, on her own table. Her father meanwhile ritualistically prepares for his exit from the 20th century, which he considers to be “overrated.” Caught between the two men and her collaborator, Bella, Marina investigates the wondrous mystery of the human fauna."(Official Site)

A movie about the inescapable violence of the authorities.

"George is released from prison after 14 years of incarceration for a murder he committed in his small Greek village. He spends his first night out in a cheap downtown hotel in Athens. There he meets Strella, a young transsexual prostitute. They spend the night together and soon they fall in love. But the past is catching up with George. With Strella on his side he will have to find a new way out"

"A company of guys plan a revolutionary escape from the misery city."

A music scene from the movie:

"A gifted electrician, Michalis Karamanos works for OTE - Greek Telecommunications Organization and it seems that he is the only one who hasn't been completely absorbed by the corrupt and all-devouring system. Acting as a member of the revolutionary organization Constitutional Struggle, which is fighting against the unpopular policy of the government, he connects the computer of the director of OTE to an explosive device.

He threatens to destroy the telecommunications of the country if he is not allowed to broadcast on television his revolutionary message during the broadcast of an important football game. The Authorities, thinking that he has gone crazy, try to bring him around using his old friends from the army, whom they pick up one by one as intermediaries. This is a situation comedy with excellent, mature plot development, plenty of suspense as well as masterful criticism of socio-political reality."(Greek Film Archive)

"Takis is trapped. Takis tries to escape. Takis wants money."

Trailer with english subs:

"A Greek shopkeeper discovers something about his family's past when his mother embraces an Albanian worker."

"Niko is an ordinary guy without any ambitions. His father's sudden death brings back his uncle who proposes to live and work together with him and his wife in the suburbs of Athens. Niko accepts his uncle's offer, which consists of protecting two purebred dogs from the hostile neighbours. Driven by envy, lust and anger, Niko merges into a vicious circle of perpetual antagonism, the struggle for power over others and discontent."

Movie trailer:

"Yorgos Symeoforidis (Yorgos Symeonidis) is a dour Greek in his early 30s who checks into a day center for former prisoners. He immediately starts tracking a young mother (Ornela Kapetani), who works in a restaurant and has a daughter (Savina Alimani). Both seem to know him, but she shrugs him off in the street; he responds by getting a job in the same eatery, run by an Albanian (Bujar Alimani). Meanwhile, Yorgos is hounded by some right-wing nationalist thugs he used to hang with." (Derek Elley)

"Vassilis Gallis is afraid of growing up. Snezana Tkatchenko is afraid of understanding. Sakis the Movie Star is afraid of feeling. Emily the Irish girl is afraid of starting over. Lauren the Wife is afraid of admitting. Agne the Teacher is afraid of living… and Father is afraid of speaking. Mother is afraid of coming back."

A movie clip:

"Part one, 'A Silver Coin on the Lips', is the moving tale of an archaeologist whose discovery of ancient Macedonian remains forces him to confront a painful personal tragedy. In part two, 'The Last of the Lesser Whites', a group of ornithologists follows a rare species of goose to a bird sanctuary in Thrace, where the game warden must make a momentous decision. In part three, 'Vietnam', a factory owner goes on a wild, destructive bender after he is abandoned by his wife and children."

"Dimitris, a grumpy middle-aged man, is having a hard time with his business partner on a particular decision as to opening a new business; and he's also having a hell of a time with his family members. He has a really short temper, and the unpleasant behaviour of his nasty wife and his disrespectful children don't contribute much to his health."(Exiled Archangel)

"An ex cop arrives in Athens after the murder of his wife. Approached by the chief of police, he reluctantly agrees to help take down a mafia ring. Thus begins a circle of blood that becomes more and more violent as the hero goes deeper into the case. When he is asked to abandon his mission, he refuses; nothing seems able to stop the violent outburst of a man desperately looking for catharsis."

A cheesy clip:

"Set among the pinnacle rocks of Meteora, central Greece, the film features ex-guerrilla fighters from the civil war who try to escape their personal problems and the gendarmerie. "

"Portugal's Fernando Pessoa and Greece's Constantine Cavafy were two of the greatest poets of the 20th century, and the literary giants finally met in 1929 aboard a transatlantic ocean liner carrying immigrants to the U.S. This genre-bending documentary from Greek filmmaker Stelios Charalambopoulos blends truth with fiction in imagining what that meeting must have been like, offering an innovative mix of archival footage and fictional re-enactments of the poets interacting with one of the ship's immigrant passengers."(Sandra Bencic)

"Sometimes your mind is the most dangerous place to be..."

Trailer with english subs:

"Hussein (Hussein Abdullah) is a Kurd from Iraq whose brother Ahmet (Ahmet Guli) has vanished. Hussein is told that Ahmet was smuggled into Greece as an illegal alien; desperate to find his brother, Hussein wants to travel to Italy as a first step to getting into Greece, but is unable to secure a visa, so he hides on board a truck being shipped to Italy on a ferry. Hussein is not alone on the truck, and soon learns that one of his traveling companions is familiar with Ahmet; he tells Hussein the truth about his brother's struggle to survive among the Kurdish refugees in Athens. Klisti Dromi was the first dramatic feature from filmmaker Stavros Ioannou, who previously distinguished himself as a documentarian."(Mark Deming)

"The hardest thing in art and in life, I think, is the simple thing, as defined by Aristotle. The more you deduct from something, the more beautiful it becomes. In our case, it was the music"(Costas Zapas)

"A 35-year old man, just released from jail, decides to make a clean break from the big city and his troubled past. He retreats to the abandoned village his father came from and moves into an old, collapsing house. Alone, far from the bigger village and doing petty jobs to survive, he will strive to find himself once more. Amidst a haze of suspicion and scorn by villagers who treat him an intruder, his past catches up to him in the form of his girlfriend from Athens."(Dimitris Karantanis)

A music trailer: