Fitzgerald

This is the first film of Theo Angelopoulos' trilogy. The story starts in 1919 with some greek refugees from Odessa arriving somewhere near Thessaloniki. Among these people are two small kids, Alexis and Eleni. Eleni is an orphan and she is also taken care by Alexis' family. The refugees build a small village somewhere near a river and we watch as the kids grow up and fall in love. But difficult times of dictatorship and war are coming...

Like a fish out of water, Vagelis--a former drug addict in his mid-thirties who yearns for deliverance and a drastic change in his life--finds himself stranded in faceless and cruel Athens, after five long years of incarceration. Nearly brought to his knees, Vagelis' only way out lies in his grandfather's dilapidated rural estate somewhere in a God-forsaken Peloponnesian village; however, fresh starts are always painful, especially when you are a stranger in a strange land. But, once a pariah, always a pariah, and Vagelis will soon have to come face-to-face with the unwritten laws of the close-knit community, as a simmering tension threatens to boil over. Now, all that's needed is a flaming catalyst, and then, nothing can stop the advent of hell on New Paradise. In the end, just how easily can a king lose his kingdom?

In Madrid, orphan sisters Irene, Ana, and Maite are raised by their austere aunt Paulina and their mute, crippled grandmother after the deaths of their mother and their military father Anselmo. Ana is a melancholic girl, fascinated by death, after watching her mother having a painful death and her father dead in bed.

Romania, 1987, the brutal Ceausescu communist regime is in place; birth control is illegal and abortion is a crime punishable by death. Gabita (Laura Vasliu) is almost five months into an unwanted pregnancy and in meek desperation turns to her friend and roommate, Otilia (Anamaria Marinca) for help in organizing an illegal termination. Unfortunate circumstances force the two women to use an unwanted male abortionist, Bebe (Vlad Ivanov). The bleakness of the storyline expresses a dark socio-political critique in the twilight years of a repressive dictatorship.

Bent on finding their anonymous father, a mythical figure tarnished by uncertainty, innocent eleven-year-old Voula and her wide-eyed five-year-old brother Alexandros summon up the courage to run away from home. As the inexperienced companions embark on a long, peril-laden quest to reunite with the long-lost parent in far-off Germany--against the backdrop of bustling railway stations and the grey, rain-soaked winter landscapes of the harsh Greek province--the face of reality, sometimes heart-warming and sometimes utterly appalling, begins to take shape. Now, on their way to the Promised Land, friendly Orestis seems eager to lend a helping hand and offer shelter; however, can the siblings trust him? But the unprotected travellers are running out of luck and hope. Is this journey to the unknown nothing but a wild goose chase?

The first scene, like almost all others, is a fighting scene. A girl, about 18, is sacked from her factory work because her trial period is over. The girl, Rosetta, is quite upset and the cops will have to arrive to get her out. She has her reasons: she lives in a caravan, with her alcoholic mother. She goes looking for work as some go to the war. Treasons, murders are in her mind, if not in her acts.

With his comatose and hospitalised wife into a steadily critical condition, a neat and grief-stricken solicitor finds himself all alone to take care of his teenage son. Struggling to cope with a shocking new reality while shrouded by a thick veil of perpetual sadness, more and more, the stone-faced lawyer realises that extreme pain and misery can evoke intense pleasure, as the neighbours' unconditional sympathy becomes increasingly addictive. Now, the pained father's burgeoning dependence to pity and the kindness of others turns into a plentiful source of bliss, and he's prepared to go to great lengths to prolong it. However, what happens if, God forbid, his wife recovers?

During off-season at the Greek seaside resort of Kinetta, three perfect strangers--a police officer out of uniform with a thing for German luxury cars and Russian women, an eccentric photographer, and a hotel chambermaid--join forces for a rather strange reason: to recreate homicides. Meticulously and with an almost ritualistic approach, the unlikely trio reenact crime scenes of brutal murders, to the point where the boundaries of their own private lives slowly begin to blur. Does this alliance lead somewhere?

Elias is an immigrant in his twenties who tries to get to Europe by a boat along with other illegal immigrants. When the boat is near the Greek shores and they hope they will soon disembark, a marine patrol approaches and Elias jumps into the sea in order to avoid arrest. So do the other people in the boat. He wakes up next morning in a shore with nudists, which is not so bad after all, since he has lost some of his clothes while he was swimming for quite a few hours. He pretends to be a nudist himself, steals some clothes and he pretends he is an employee of the hotel "Eden Club-Paradise".

An old communist returns to Greece after 32 years in the Soviet Union. However, things aren't the way he had hoped for.

Spiros retires as a schoolteacher, his daughter is married, and he starts his annual journey with his bees to get honey from different areas. In his truck he finds a young girl who has just been abandoned and has no roots. Spiros lets her follow for a day. Seeing her difficulty in getting further hitch-hiking, he takes her back. They will meet and part several times. Later she will say that Spiros is the only one who has ever been kind to her. But his emotions are so restrained that he cannot show anything until a volcanic eruption breaks through. He does not seek serious contact until the eruption makes him drive the car right through the glass wall of the café in which the girl is sitting. She immediately follows him. But after this criminal event they can no longer live at hotels. From the beginning she was willing to sleep with him. But when he finally kisses her, her justified reaction is to repeat "Not in this way!" A friend had a shut down cinema where they could sleep. Endlessly she goes around starch naked. Fully clothed he is smoking and completely ignores her. What finally happens is almost a rape. The girl leaves him afterwards. When he realises what he has lost, he overturns all beehives and the bees kill him.

The story follows the sporadic reunions of six friends during the seven year period of their integration into society. The reunions take place on their ancestral island, the setting of their common past. Every time they return "home" they carry with them the results of their personal choices. They also carry with them the effects of modern Greek society, a society the slowly but surely changes them, weathering their relationships, until they gradually lose contact with each other. The end of this epoch, will find them dispersed, confronting the dawn of an era where the pursuit of individual ambitions reigns.

A, an American film director of Greek ancestry, is making a film that tells his story and the story of his parents. It is a tale that unfolds in Italy, Germany, Russia, Kazakhstan, Canada and the USA. The main character is Eleni, who is claimed and claims the absoluteness of love. At the same time the film is a long journey into the vast history and the events of the last fifty years that left their mark on the 20th century. The characters in the film move as though in a dream. The dust of time confuses memories. A searches for them and experiences them in the present.

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? If so, where are they? - "Why A? It's an alphabetical choice. Every filmmaker remembers the first time he looked through the viewfinder of a camera. It is a moment that is not so much the discovery of cinema--but the discovery of the world. But there comes a moment when the filmmaker begins to doubt his own capacity to see things, when he no longer knows if his gaze is right and innocent." --Theo Angelopoulos

A contemporary Western about a native farmer who lives and works alone in a farmhouse in the heart of a mountain forest in Northern Greece. For years now, he has been fighting with an expanding industrial Monster digging up the forest, disturbing the lush flora and threatening his property. Yet, the greatest threat comes with the sudden arrival of his young son, after a twenty year separation. They turn into enemies under one roof and confront each other head on, with nature as their only observer. To prevent the muddy ground from being pulled out from under their feet for profit, father and son must dig deep into it.

A night nurse in a hospital provides special services to families who have recently lost their loved ones. She is a member of a group called the Alps, whose members offer, for a fee, to play recently deceased during visits of their grieving relatives.

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.

The film gives a romanticized biography of Theodoros Kolokotronis, a Greek historical hero serving as a metaphor for Greece itself. Drawing upon a circular view of Greek history, the film presents conflicting ideologies - primitive communism, anarchism, chiefdom or kingdom, personality cult - and shows the institutions of property and power in a bad light.