dir. Babis Makridis
2018 // 1 hr 39 min // Digital Projection
Starring: Yannis Drakopoulos, Evi Saoulidou
Addicted to sadness, a middle-aged lawyer is only happy when he is unhappy. When his wife re-emerges from a long-lasting coma, he concocts increasingly elaborate and unsettling ways to try to regain what he misses most: the pity of others. Co-written by frequent Yorgos Lanthimos collaborator, Efthimis Filippou and the second film in our July Greek Weird Wave trilogy.
Greek Weird Wave is a movement that arose in response to Greece’s government-debt crisis that began in 2009 and led to intense tax increases, impoverishment, high unemployment, and more. The Wave draws upon the difficulty and peculiarity of this period by exploring the human experience in surrealist, and often upsetting, ways. Alienated protagonists, minimal dialogue delivered impassively, uncomfortable sexual encounters, and the irrational conveyed rationally occupy films of this movement. They’re bleak, subversive, and definitely WEIRD!