Dimos Theos | 1974 | 90´
Cast: Anestis Vlahos, Kyriakos Katzourakis, Eleni Theofilou, Dimos Starenios, Elli Xanthaki, Stavros Tornes, Kostas Sfikas, Theo Angelopoulos.
Awards / Distinctions / Festival participation: Honorary Distinction, Venice Film Festival 1968. Best Artistic Film, Best Newcomer Director, Hnorary Distinction for the actor Anestis Vlahos, Thessaloniki Film Festival 1974.
A journalist is accused of murdering an American colleague who has been investigating the political role of a Middle-East oil cartel. Another colleague, a Jewish person who later gets murdered, just like the girl who is the main witness, also gets arrested by the authorities. The journalist is temporarily released and starts his own research on the case, gradually realizing that the government aims at covering the truth and misleading the public opinion. He tries to convince the main witness to testify, but she is then found murdered, while the noose is suffocatingly tightening around him and the truth.
A film inspired by the well-known Polk murder case, when the American journalist George Polk was found murdered while he was visiting Greece to interview Markos Vafeiadis. “Kierion”, the first feature film by Dimos Theos, following the “100 Hours in May”, did not only mark the birth of New Greek Cinema but also a new genre of deep, fearless political art, which was represented by the director throughout his career. Winning an award in Venice years before it was screened in Greece, the film captured in the big screen social conditions that no one dared to bring to the cinema; from the transgressive, authoritative police violence to the expansion of the students’ movement. Taking advantage of the noir form and the help of many well-known filmmakers and friends of that period, Theos presents Athens, as a hypnotizing and enchanted city, without beautifying or diverging from his ultimate goal: revealing the truth.
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