“It’s not a punishment to remember someone you love. The punishment is to forget”
A bittersweet love story set against the tribulations of a 1922 Atlantic crossing of 700 proxy brides, aboard the SS King Alexander, on their way to America. Niki, a seamstress from Samothrace, resigns herself to saving the family honour by marrying a Chicago tailor her sister previously rejected. On the journey, she meets Norman, an American war photographer disheartened by a career and a marriage in tatters. Brides will touch its audience with an unforgettable story of a doomed love affair between star crossed lovers. It follows a journey from east to west, at the same time exploring the inner journey of the people who battle the waves of agony, doubt, courage, resignation, and hope.
Director: Pantelis Voulgaris | Rating: PG | 2004 | Drama |122 minutes | Greek, English, Russian dialogue with English subtitles
Marathon Μαραθώνιος
Marathonios
From his earliest childhood memories, Andreas ran. Set against the backdrop of the Athens Olympic Games, Marathon is the story of a man who is caught in an emotional deadlock. He is a man who cannot, it seems, either start or finish the many relationships he enters throughout his life. Instead, he runs from one woman to another and from one crisis to the next. The story follows the many insights of his girlfriends and the way in which he relates to their observations. This exposes a complex personality and sheds light on the ultimate emptiness attached to the thrill of the chase.
Director: Antonis Kokkinos | Rating: R 18+ | 2004 | Drama | 97 minutes | Greek dialogue with English subtitles
Dust Η Σκόνη που πέφτει
I Skoni pou pefti
An unexpected documentary image, which he believes to be that of his father, sends Chronis out of his writer’s block and into a search to uncover the truth about his father’s death. Did he die in battle, as was officially declared? Or did he defect from the nationalist forces to join the leftist guerrillas, as his uncle claimed? His search for the truth becomes an obsession threatening to split his family. The blind trail on which he embarks leads him through Greece, Bulgaria and the Czech Republic. Talking to anyone who can help him with his quest, aspects of his own identity begin to unfold.
Director: Tasos Psarras | Rating: R 18+ | 2004 | Drama |98 minutes | Greek dialogue with English subtitles
Hostage * Όμηρος
Omiros
“One must live with honour, like a man… or die with honour. Yes, there’s the rub.” Sophocles
One morning, a young man boards an inter-city bus on its daily route to Thessaloniki, in northern Greece. He hijacks the bus at gunpoint and takes seven of the passengers hostage. In his left hand he holds a grenade. In the right, a Kalashnikov. This is the story of 25-year-old Albanian immigrant Elion Senia. While his demands include a ransom of half-a-million euros and safe passage to his homeland, his basic cry is simple: “I want my honour”. As events unfold, they are broadcast live on national television. For the next twenty hours, a wild, and at times bleakly comic chase, winds its way through northern Greece. The bus leads a convoy of police cars, television crews, desperate relatives, and bystanders….all the while heading towards the Albanian border….
Director: Constantine Giannaris| Rating: R 18+ | 2004 | Drama |102 minutes | Greek with Albanian dialogue with English subtitles
*Adult themes, strong language, nudity, explicit sex scenes, drug references
Like Chef Like God Είναι ο Θεός Μάγειρας
Ine o Theos Mayiras
“Lately, things haven’t been going so well…”
Thodorakis keeps changing jobs and women, looking for something worth devoting himself to. Despite the affections of an adoring aunt and the spiritual guidance of Agios Fanourios, his rather lackadaisical attitude only changes when he accidentally discovers his talent for cooking. He soon becomes a chef and joins a secret society of cooks. Little by little he becomes engrossed in the quest to create the perfect dish and by doing so prove himself superior to his sceptical peers. However, the infinite choices life dishes up lead him down a self-destructive path. Just before reaching the ultimate impasse, a personal tragedy forces him to put his life into perspective.
Director: Stergios Niziris| Rating: R 18+ | 2004 | Comedy |96 minutes | Greek dialogue with English subtitles
Liza And All The Others * Η Λίζα και Όλοι οι Άλλοι
I Liza kai Oloi oi Alloi
“Seeking young, handsome and normal guy, for over two months…”
Liza, a young attractive journalist, is the archetype of the designer lifestyle generation. As the narrator of the film, she reveals her unsuccessful quest for the ideal male partner. Liza’s routine indulgence in the incidental pleasures of life is complicated by her constant preoccupation with deconstructing the behaviour and psyche of the opposite sex. Her relationship with the suave yet domineering Gianni perpetuates her insecurities and seems doomed to fail. Then she meets Paris, the owner of a central Athens bar. The disarmingly charming Paris takes Liza’s heart, and body, to places it’s never been and has her asking whether she has finally found Mr Right…
Director: Nikos Perakis| Rating: R 18+ | 2003 | Comedy - Romance |104 minutes | Greek dialogue with English subtitles
*Adult themes, strong language, nudity, explicit sex scenes, drug references
Love at 16 Αγάπη στα 16
Agapi sta Dekaksi
"An original and cheerful description of the personal experience of young boys towards love and sexuality." 7th Olympia International Film Festival for Children and Young People
A poignant tale of first love, and first loss, seen through the eyes of its young male protagonist. Alexis, 15, lives in an idyllic Greek village, sometime in the 1980s. Girls preoccupy his thoughts and actions and those of his mischievous friends. A young Athenian girl, Antigone, and her family arrive in the village, when her policeman father is posted there. Her arrival will turn the world of sensitive Alexis upside down.
Director: Constantinos Haralambous| Rating: R 18+ | 2004 | Drama - Coming of Age | 102 minutes | Greek dialogue with English subtitles
Rakushka (Shell)
Rakushka is a film that deals with the alienation and violence in human relationships, which emerge when different worlds intertwine.
Zoya is an eighteen-year-old cellist from Tashkent seeking a future in Athens. Vassilis, a pawnbroker with a hidden past, is enchanted from the moment she enters his store. He woos her and she eventually agrees to marry him.
What begins as mutual salvation soon deteriorates. Vassilis, once the loving protector, becomes increasingly domineering. His possessiveness is cultivated by their age difference, the vast social and cultural chasm between them and her financial dependence. She reacts with rebellious silence and abrupt isolation. Something has to crack…
Director: Fotini Siskopoulou| Rating: R 18+ | 2004 | Drama | 107 minutes | Greek with Russian dialogue and English subtitles
Real Life * Αληθινή Ζωή
Alithini Zoi
“We are what our families and lives make us… no-one escapes destiny.”
As gorgeous as the society it portrays, “Real Life” offers a glimpse into the world of the idle and decadent elite of Athens, where the young and beautiful amuse themselves with the single-minded pursuit of their own pleasure. When one young man born into this maelstrom of privilege and vanity tries to break away from it all, he soon realizes how enmeshed he is in this self-indulgent, superficial world, his fate predetermined by class and his family’s dark history.
Dimitri Eipides, Toronto International Film Festival 2004, website
Director: Panos Koutras| Rating: R 18+ | 2004 | Drama - Fantasy | 112 minutes | Greek with French dialogue and English subtitles
*Adult themes, strong language, nudity, explicit sex scenes, drug references
Testosterone * Τεστοστερόνη
Testosteroni
“The day will come, and this is science speaking, when we won’t have to go running after women…they will be running after us”
This film operates on many levels: a thriller, whose protagonist is trapped on a secluded island of women; a satire of young people’s sexual relations in today’s society; or a study of the age-old battle of the sexes in the context of modern society.
Petros visits his native island to borrow his late grandfather’s VW Beetle for some R&R back on the mainland. Whilst staying with his eccentric, free-thinking aunt, he finds himself pursued by the island’s women and he fears he is the only man left! What initially appears to be a young man’s dream quickly turns into a salacious nightmare.
Director: George Panousopoulos| Rating: R 18+ | 2004 |
Comedy – Satire |
95 minutes | Greek dialogue with English subtitles
*Adult themes, strong language, nudity, explicit sex scenes, drug references
Trilogy: The Weeping Meadow Τριλογία:Το Λειβάδι που Δακρύζει
Trilogia: To Livadi Pou Dakrizi
Trilogy: The Weeping Meadow is Theo Angelopoulos’ first feature since Eternity and a Day which won the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 1998.
Trilogy: The Weeping Meadow is a visually poetic film, rich in powerful imagery. It sees a bitter personal tragedy unfold against the major events of early twentieth century Greece. Russian-born Eleni is adopted by a Greek family which flees to Greece during the period of the Russian revolution. She elopes with Alexis, the son of her much older fiancé Spyros. The two arrive in Thessaloniki, where Alexis continues his career as a musician whilst Eleni raises their two sons. Some years later, Alexis leaves for America seeking a better life for his family, however Eleni cannot join him. She is stranded in Greece to be exposed to the ravages of World War II, the horrors of the civil war and a fate unknown.
Director: Theo Angelopoulos | Rating: R 18+ | 2004 | Drama/Romance | 162 minutes | Greek dialogue with English subtitles
