Three old cinemas of urban Athens, “Ideal”, “Astor”, “Irida”, with a history of almost a century, are fighting their own battle against the controversial regeneration of the historical center of Athens, the encroachment of short-term leases and hotel and shop chains . An unequal race, if one looks at the financial figures at stake. And they are not the only Greek cinemas that are at risk. For years, neighborhood cinemas have been facing a question of survival, having to compete with online platforms on the one hand, and the pandemic on the other for the last three years. To these are added the consequences of the economic crisis of the previous years and the perennial absence of coordinated state support for the sector.

The objective difficulties in the field of Greek film production are well known. We heard them once again from young, mainly, filmmakers on the sidelines of the successful Greek Film Festival in Berlin. Packed halls, enthusiastic discussions with film directors, actors and producers and a recurring pattern: “The film was made under difficult conditions”, “During the pandemic we didn’t have the means”, “There is no money for cinema anyway”, “Here and for years films are made in an environment of crises”, “It is ‘do it yourself'”. A difficult path, but a life choice for those who finally decide to cross it, as Vangelis Mourikis, an iconic protagonist of modern Greek cinema and an honored person in Berlin, said in an interview with DW.

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Drive for filmmaking despite obstacles

“Sometimes miracles happen. Even more rarely they can happen to you too” told DW the young director Giorgos Goussis, who with his first feature film, “Magnetic Fields” (Magnetic Fields), shot entirely in lockdown on Christmas 2020 in a deserted Kefalonia, managed to win a series of important awards and the Greek nomination for the Oscar for best foreign language film. A peculiar road movie that deals with issues such as personal crisis, escape, the search for a way out where there is none, companionship, freedom. And all in a hazy, inhospitable setting with the absence of people, except for the two protagonists.

In films like “Magnetic Fields”, which were born in extraordinary circumstances such as the pandemic, a new aesthetic emerges, otherworldly, just like reality itself. It is an effortless, fast-paced Greek cinematography with the signature of many young filmmakers who live and express themselves within the complex Greek society. “We were leaving a lock-up, playing free on an empty island. Subconsciously, this joy, what we lacked during the pandemic, came through in the film” says Giorgos Goussis. “It is perhaps necessary for artists to sometimes reach a quagmire in order to create. But also to take risks”, he observes, commenting on the conditions under which his generation is forced to make films. “For some, of course, this is tiring.”

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Honest reflections of our modern Greek self

However, with a broader look at films by young creators who stood out in Berlin and which have long been charting their own path inside and outside Greek borders, one realizes that they have some common components, sometimes overemphasized and sometimes more quietly, suggestively. Such as the social and economic problems that push large sections of the population to their limits, the taboos or the chronic structural dysfunctions of Greek society, starting with the nuclear family. Two films that realistically record what goes on behind the closed doors of many Greek homes are “Black Stone” by Spyros Iakovides, which also won the Emerging Greeks Award, a film that thematizes the archetype of the legendary “Greek mother” that replaces even the state, as well as issues related to disability, racism, the proverbial Greek bureaucracy. Another film shot in the pandemic with references to a faltering Greece.

Like the shocking film “Dignity” by Dimitris Katsimiris, shot in a small-town living room, where three brothers and their partners argue about what will happen next to their elderly father, bedridden after a stroke. Economic pressure, hereditary, close at first but ultimately unslaving blood ties, impossibility of dialogue, voices and behind all this hard truths, hidden for years, that come to the surface and lead to quagmire. And “Dignity” was filmed in coronavirus conditions, with minimal means. A personal testimony of the director, after years of working as a social worker in the Greek countryside, but also after an eight-month stay of his sister in a Greek public hospital.