Nadia Mourouzi
"A," a Greek filmmaker living in exile in the United States, returns to his native Ptolemas to attend a special screening of one of his extremely controversial films. But A's real interest lies elsewhere--the mythical reels of the very first film shot by the Manakia brothers, who, at the dawn of the age of cinema, tirelessly criss-crossed the Balkans and, without regard for national and ethnic strife, recorded the region's history and customs. Did these primitive, never-developed images really exist?
It is a story of a normal, everyday Greek family that each member turns out to be wacko or gets wacko by the other members. The father is the stoic figure that accepts everything. The mother has a middle age crisis and takes advantage of her husbands inability. The older brother is a doctor of psychology and has everything under control (or believe so) and the younger brother does nothing with his life acclaiming that he is a filmmaker.
Young Giannis escapes from prison and hides in a deserted factory, with the dream of traveling far away. At the factory, a group of university students rehearse Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream, and a girl from the group discovers him. The students accept him into their group, offering him a part in the play as well. One night, three young men try to destroy the props for the theatrical performance, and Giannis tries to stop them, ending up back in prison. The students manage to get him out of jail, and he embarks on a ship and leaves far away.
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 is an important Greek politician who disappeared mysteriously 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.
This is a series of intersecting stories. A petty crook and former lover of a lazy ingénue steals the box-office receipts from the Odeon of Herodus Atticus, on the day an important football game is also taking place. There is also the story of the half-mad mother of the ingénue who refuses to put shoes on because she believes that shoes lead people astray. An eccentric grave-digger produces a two-seater coffin for couple-victims of car accidents. The film also tells the story of one of the Odeon's cleaning women and of a watermelon that goes all around the city, pursued by a tired theater technician and his sister, who is a tour guide. The impresario conducts an inquiry after the theft, but the thief and his two associates, the ingénue and the technician, use what was stolen to set up a small theatre. Small everyday stories and comic incidents combine to create a portrait of modern-day Athens.
Two children search for their father who is supposed to live in Germany. Their obsession for this father figure will take them to the boundaries between childhood and adolescence.
A bee keeper, Spiros, travels from the north to the south of Greece with his bees to meet the spring.
