The Daughter (I kóri)

• language: Greek
• director: Thanos Anastopoulos
• actor: Aggelos Papadimas Ieronymos Kaletsanos Savina Alimani Yorgos Simeonidis

Synopsis:

A girl in her teens, an eight-year-old boy, and a father suddenly no longer there. When fourteen-year-old Myrto learns her father has fled to avoid paying his debts, she kidnaps the son of his business partner whom she blames for bankrupting her father’s joiner’s workshop. Memories resurface as she wanders through the aisles of the workshop, where she hides her victim between stacks of spruce, oak and ebony. Were things really better in the old days? Myrto waits desperately for some sign that her father is alive, entertaining perfidious, sadistic fantasies about her young prisoner.
Thanos Anastopoulos employs precise images and a protocol-like dramatic structure infused with thriller elements to portray a society whose key players flee their responsibilities. He shows us images of the crisis that have already become symbolic: the black market, invoices no-one can afford to pay, Molotov cocktails in the streets. And in between, the warm colours of wood form a clear contrast to the social egotism of the surroundings. The crisis sends its children out into a moral no-man’s land. Yet the suspicion remains that the relationship between the generations was already out of sync beforehand. [Synopsis courtesy of Berlinale]

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