In 1960, the agreement between Greece and Germany is signed, leading almost 600,000 Greeks to migrate and live as “Gastarbeiter” in its factories Germany. Theo, Aglaia and Vasso, descendants of the first generation of immigrants and protagonists of the documentary “Two Three Three Years”, through their lives illuminate the reflections of the two cultures.

“In my work, the children who had been born or raised in Germany had been distinguished in my eyes. They had a different method, another faith in themselves. This has been interested in dealing with the second generation and exploring the difficult way these people grew up, ”observes documentary director Lydia Constanta. From babies, from three years old, they were left alone at home, while others were left in a Greek village and one day woke up and were in Germany and had to learn the language. “A huge conflict between the closed environment of the Greek community, which was afraid of losing its identity, and Germany, which was then growing rapidly. In some ways the two cultures have co -ordinated and, through these pressures and demands, their disadvantage became an advantage, ”the director explains.

Theo Votsos, a literary translator and a film critic, grew up with the Greek element dominated, but became a citizen of the world. “I’m not a German or Greek, I’m something else,” he says in the film. Aglaia Blioumi calls it “hybrid” and describes her childhood years and female immigration, which was a escape from the province’s embrace, in her book “Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh Vassiliki Gergou tries to bring Greek music to Germany and talks about the illusion of returning home: “It is very interesting that the dream of returning has never left the first generation immigrants, who fulfilled it after the pension. It was not two or three years that they finally stayed in Germany, as they said at the beginning. The film shows this deeply existential, that we all live with illusions, “Constanta stresses. “In foreign I am Greek and in Greece a stranger” is confirmed quite a bit in the film, but now it takes another form. The documentary travels up to the younger generations of Greek immigrants to Germany who adapt more, do not lose their roots, but they feel more European at the end of the day.

“Lost Yannina: A Topography of Jewish Memory”

How are the maps designed? Where are the signs of the life of the silver Jews of Ioannina? Humble and unknown monuments of a daily life that ended at once. Lost Yiannina is the first documentary to talk about this relationship between the space and memory of the Jews of this city, with testimonies and research of fifteen years. “In a city that has a separate Jewish past, through the routes, we mapped the memory of its people. The subject of our documentary is not a close historical. It is a kind of memorable topography, “Esther Solomon, a scientific manager of the project, told Deutsche Welle. Even if the community itself no more than 50 people live in the community, there is a significant number associated with this city and its community – descendants of survivors, who migrated to other places in Athens, Israel, but mainly to the US. “It’s a historian of the time, in which we have changed ourselves. Most people have “left” us, from those who have told us their stories, and the documentary is now gaining another value, “says his director, Nikos Chrysikakis.

The documentary describes the peaceful coexistence of the Romanians with the Christians in the city of Ioannina, the family moments, the Jewish holidays, the trade, before being interrupted abruptly by the war and the violent displacement of the 1,850 Romanians on March 25, 1944. “Such images not even in Dante’s hell. Pregnant women with baby hugs, old slippers, “Stella Cohen describes with pain in the documentary. “The gendarmes knew, they betrayed us,” he says. When she returned to Ioannina, she was expelled from her home in the worst way. “With a doctor less, Greece does not suffer anything, but it is a shame for a doctor to be executed without passing by court,” Henry Levis exclaimed, so he escaped his execution from the Nazis. The testimony of Jesus Matsas on Austrian television in the 1980s is also shocking when, in the face of then Austrian President Kurt Waldoim, he discovered his torture.

“Even a guide can become a mnemonic place, a building, but even an apartment building in place of the old house or today’s shop in place of a shop. Ichkale, the Acropolis area of ​​the Ottoman Castle of the City, which is one of the most tourist spots of modern Ioannina, had been completely silenced as a gathering of the Jews of the city for the Nazi camps. In the basements of the Zosimia School, the architectural jewelry of the city of Ioannina, many Jews were detained, tortured or displaced to various concentration camps, “Solomon said. This recording acquires a different meaning when human rights are at a high turning point that we would find difficult a few years ago. “There is also an extreme and unfair identification of the present in the past, in a way that proportions are wronged by the victims of the past,” says Solomon. The film was screened as part of the 80th anniversary of Auschwitz’s liberation with the narrative technique of the walk, who invites the viewer to cross the memory sites.