Kostas Berikopoulos
The citizens of Athens are tormented by insomnia. Rumor has it that after dark an elusive creature is roaming the city streets. The film’s characters will cross its path during one night and for the first time in a while, they’ll go to sleep.
In 414 B.C., Aristophanes wrote the comedy Ornithes, in which two men leave their birthplace in search of a better life. They arrive in the woodland of the birds and meet Hoopoe, the man who became a bird. This Greek comedy is a contemplation, a voyage of discovery, an essay and perhaps even an indictment. The film mixes talking heads with theatre, street scenes and splendid panoramas. Based on the desire for freedom, but also the obstacles humanity imposes upon itself to find this freedom – walls around countries, social conventions, rules. Children play on swings to feel that tingling in their tummies, the evolutionary memory of flying through the air.
The performance is over, the actors step off the stage, the audience leaves the theater. However,in this case, the end marks the beginning. Eleven spectators star in their own tales, intertwined in a collage crafted by life itself. Restaurant and movie theater owners, immigrants and tourists, regulars and passers-by interact with the urban entourage and the people they come across, weaving a mosaic of endless possibilities.
A lonely man who lives in a large house with his servant, organizes his birthday party but having a small issue with his guests.
Twice-orphaned Jace, a seven-year-old Albanian of Greek origin, witnesses a massacre that wipes out his entire foster family in Argyrokastron, and then falls in the hands of a bunch of ruthless gangsters who "export" children abroad for various profitable reasons (ranging from beggary to organ trade). Jace ends up in Athens, Greece, begging at street corners, exploring the secret horrors of brutal institutions for young offenders or, much later, serving obscure patrons, in an underworld where violent loss seems to be his only destiny. The movie follows Jace's inverted Odyssey in a dark universe of abuse, murder and fear, as he desperately (and silently) seeks for a "family" of his own or, at least, for a sense of belonging
The trainee Orthopedic Doctor George Spyrou began his career in the fictional General Orthopedic Hospital "All Saints', somewhere on the outskirts of Athens. There you will discover that the hospital population, by physicians, administrators and nurses, to patients, they are all forced to confront dancing a grotesque dance routine. With humor and humanity within a social landscape so angry George Spyratos trying to balance between the warring parties these microcosms. The gradual evolution from inexperienced trainee to experienced editor will be done through the encounter with the absurd environment. Something that would transform from naive young man who initially stands speechless in front of modern Greek chaos, a mature man who will ultimately make a thoughtful account of choice, but persevere, continue to work on public health.
